The DSM criteria for borderline personality disorder are:

• A vervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts
  • Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
  • A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
  • Identity disturbance
  • Impulsivity in at least two areas that re potentially self-damaging
  • Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behaviour.
  • Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood
  • Chronic feelings of emptiness
  • Inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger
  • Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms