This guideline covers recognising and managing borderline personality disorder. It aims to help people with borderline personality disorder to manage feelings of distress, anxiety, worthlessness and anger, and to maintain stable and close relationships with others.

April 2022: The latest revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) no longer distinguishes the previous separate types of personality disorder, but defines it as a single condition, classified by severity. The new classification does not include borderline personality disorder as a separate condition. We are currently exploring whether the existing recommendations can be amended in line with ICD-11 or whether we need to withdraw this guideline.

Recommendations

This guideline includes recommendations on:

Who is it for?

  • Healthcare professionals
  • People with borderline personality disorder, their families and carers

Is this guideline up to date?

We checked this guideline in July 2018. We found no new evidence that affects the recommendations in this guideline.

Guideline development process

How we develop NICE guidelines

This guideline was previously called borderline personality disorder: treatment and management.

Your responsibility

The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.

All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.

Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.

Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.

  • National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)