Larry Culpepper, MD: The Challenge of Treating BPD

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) remains one of the most challenging and misunderstood disorders in psychiatry.

The disease is often diagnosed when the individual is a young adult, but psychiatrists often have to build trust with the patient over several months in order to really start seeing progress.

And that trust is ultimately hard to build.

During the 2022 Annual Psychiatric Times™ World CME Conference in San Diego on August 11, Larry Culpepper, MD, founding Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Boston University discussed studying borderline personality disorder more and how to best care for patients.

In an interview with HCPLive®, Culpepper explained why the disease can be so challenging and what psychiatrists must do to build that needed trust.

But most of all what is needed is more research into the disease.

“We don’t understand it,” Culpepper said. “We don’t understand its origins and how it developed in the individual. We don’t understand the issues for the patient that play out in their borderline personality disorder responses to the world.”

However, even with that said, Culpepper said psychiatrists do have the ability to make a positive impact in the patient’s life, mainly by promoting the correct course of therapy.