This was a very big concern of mine because I have two young sons with my BPD ex husband.  I think it's the age old question of "nature vs. nurture".  And I think right now because they are so young (2 and 1), even if they are prone to BPD in terms of genetics, there is a possibility that with the right form of parenting, they could lead somewhat normal lives.  I noticed that my mother in law always catered to my husband's BPD nature (maybe even if she wasn't quite aware of it).  When he threw a fit, everyone would cave in to his needs.  She did this more so when he was a child.  She started to do that with my oldest son when he started the whole terrible two temper tantrum thing.  I think impulse control is learned behavior.  In my opinion most BPD's lack this.  So I think it's a mixture of genetics, environment and "learned behavior"...  

Wow. I find a minimum of 18 family members with symptoms of BPD or other PD.  It is not that I want to be diagnosing everyone, I just could not believe the abuse that exists within our family and I wanted to take a closer look at the symptoms I have been seeing for years.  

I only included relatives of blood and never counted the married into which would really bring the count up.

A child is six times more likely to develop BPD if a parent has the disorder.

You also need to consider that your children are at risk for developing the disorder if their mother has it.  

There are some things you can do to lessen the risk that they will develop it.  Build up their self-esteem, make sure that you are mentally healthy and treat any mental health problems that they may develop, in particular, ADHD.  Untreated ADHD is one of the risk factors for developing BPD.  

 Abigail

 

I'm not sure.  

It's also important to remember that not all people with BPD have a history of abuse/neglect/abandonment.  

That's hard to see, because the perspective of BPD is often one of victimization (e.g. they perceive they've been victimized all the time - current and past).  Personality disorders, in general, are a condition where there isn't a clear path of "disease" like:  a + b = personality disorder.  Maybe someday, as brain research gets better.

Molly

BPD results from the combination of a sensitive emotional nature (inborn) along with an invalidating environment.  The environment does not have to be abusive in order to be invalidating.  The parent and child may simply be a poor fit.

My niece, for instance, was diagnosed with BPD.  There was some sort of trauma at her birth... .a lack of oxygen.  She was developmentally slow, but the doctors did not really acknowledge it.  Anyway, I'm saying she was 'different' and it was difficult to be validating for her.  Just your normal, run of the mill environment was invalidating for her... .because she was different from the get go and this was never appropriately addressed and compensated for.

Wanted to add this recent information to the discussion:

Possible Genetic Causes Of Borderline Personality Disorder Identified

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2008) — According to the National Institute of Mental Health, borderline personality disorder (BPD) is more common than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and is estimated to affect 2 percent of the population. In a new study, a University of Missouri researcher and Dutch team of research collaborators found that genetic material on chromosome nine was linked to BPD features, a disorder characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image and behavior, and can lead to suicidal behavior, substance abuse and failed relationships.

“The results of this study hopefully will bring researchers closer to determining the genetic causes of BPD and may have important implications for treatment programs in the future,” said Timothy Trull, professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science. “Localizing and identifying the genes that influence the development of BPD will not only be important for scientific purposes, but will also have clinical implications.”

In an ongoing study of the health and lifestyles of families with twins in the Netherlands, Trull and colleagues examined 711 pairs of siblings and 561 parents to identify the location of genetic traits that influences the manifestation of BPD. The researchers conducted a genetic linkage analysis of the families and identified chromosomal regions that could contain genes that influence the development of BPD. Trull found the strongest evidence for a genetic influence on BPD features on chromosome nine.

In a previous study, Trull and research colleagues examined data from 5,496 twins in the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia to assess the extent of genetic influence on the manifestation of BPD features. The research team found that 42 percent of variation in BPD features was attributable to genetic influences and 58 percent was attributable to environmental influences, and this was consistent across the three countries. In addition, Trull and colleagues found that there was no significant difference in heritability rates between men and women, and that young adults displayed more BPD features then older adults.

“We were able to provide precise estimates of the genetic influence on BPD features, test for differences between the sexes, and determine if our estimates were consistent across three different countries,” Trull said. “Our results suggest that genetic factors play a major role in individual differences of borderline personality disorder features in Western society.”

Journal references:

   1. Distel et al. Chromosome 9: linkage for borderline personality disorder features. Psychiatric Genetics, 2008; 18 (6): 302 DOI: 10.1097/YPG.0b013e3283118468

   2. Distel et al. Heritability of borderline personality disorder features is similar across three countries. Psychological Medicine, 2008; 38 (9): DOI: 10.1017/S0033291707002024

Very helpful Skip!  Is there research data that has measured the prevalance of BPD in children born to BPD mothers?

Of course there are individual cases of BPD children with BPD mothers, but I was wondering if there was national data that provides a % number.

Interesting study, Skip,  I often wonder given the distortions of facts by those with BPD if the trauma that they were exposed to as children is real or imaginary.  I suppose that imaginary trauma can be damaging also.  

We don't know if she experienced trauma at her mothers house or if her mothers rejection has caused it.  We do know that she received a lot of love and support also.  It is very frustrating that we are the ones she "can't be around" now.  

She is an adult now and responsible for her choices regardless of the wounds of her childhood... .just like all of us.

I have two theories:

Spiritual malady  Definitely yes to the idea of a spiritual malady.  No doubt in my mind that many who are afflicted with this disorder is a direct link to their shameful and sinful patterns and choices.  Because of their impulsive behaviors they are often full of regret later and are embarrassed internally.  That embarrassment is the motivation for so much of what we see in them, anger, anxiety, odd thinking, unusual perceptions, substance abuse, sexual deviance.  A masking of sorts to numb and dull the shame and guilt.      

Emotional developmental issue  I also feel that BPD is also an emotional developmental issue.  I think that a borderline suffers from a lack of growing up emotionally, hence why we see such child-like behaviors from them.  For whatever reasons (i.e. environmental, dysfunctional parents, trauma, abuse, etc.) they were never able to bridge that gap into adulthood which allows them to have healthy interpersonal skills.  My interactions with my ex feels like I am dealing with a child.  

OFO

Confusion about the role a particular genetic fingerprint plays in the development of disease

I'm a scientist doing medical research, so my post is more in that vein.

I think there is some confusion about the role a particular genetic fingerprint plays in the development of disease.  For some diseases there is a very clear relationship between a genetic defect (mutation, lack of a gene, etc) and the disease.  And it is deterministic: if you have the mutation or lack the gene, you get the disease.    There is no middle ground.  For example, Huntington's disease is a single-gene disease.  If you have a mutation to the gene that produces the protein Huntington, you get Huntington's disease.  That's it.  :)own's syndrome is a chromosal disease (still a genetic disorder).  You have 3 copies of chromosome 21, you have Down's syndrome.    

However, for most medical problems genetics are not nearly as deterministic.  Instead, they are multi-factorial, meaning they are influenced by a variety of factors including your particular genetic fingerprint and environment.  

First, let's talk a bit about genes and phenotype.  Phenotype is an observable trait of an organism (green eyes for example) and it is governed by genotype (the particular genetic code of an organism).  There are variations in phenotype (we have different colored eyes) because there is variation in genotype;  there are different alleles for each gene.  So while we all have genes for eye color, my gene specifies brown eyes (the brown eye allele), while your gene specifies blue eyes (the blue eye allele).  Thus, although we have the same genes, because we have a different genotype we have a different phenotype.  (This is a simplication but will do )

We also need to understand gene expression.  What are genes, really?  They are instructions for the cell, telling it to make a particular protein that the cell needs.  This process is highly regulated both in time and cell type, i.e. both the time that the cell starts making protein from a gene and the place where it starts making protein from gene is important.  Your eyes, for example, have the genes or instructions to make new arms and legs, but we don't have arms and legs growing from our eyes because those genes are turned off.  (Again, a simplification, but go with me).  Environmental influences can affect the regulation of these processes.  It can also affect what the cell would normally do with a properly made protein, disrupting the normal protein processes.

Now we can understand the role of genes and environment in disease and why, for example, some of us can have BPD parents but not be BPDs themselves and others of us can be non-BPD parents with BPD kids.  

For many diseases, your particular genotype can influence the chances you might develop a disease (a phenotype), but not PRE-DETERMINE that you will have a disease.  This is because these are multi-factorial diseases that do not result from a single genetic mutation, such as Huntington's disease, but result from a combination of your particular genotype and the effects of your particular environment on the genotype.  Further complicating the issue is that many different combinations of these factors can result in disease.  Consider a simple case where say 10 genes influence you chance of getting a disease.  Well, what if you have 8 of the 10 alleles that influence towards disease?  7, 6, 4?  What can we say about your likelihood of getting disese?  What about environment... .so many little variables in environment.  The complexity and difficulty of understanding the role of genes and environment becomes clearer... .

Such appears to be the case with BPD.  Let's consider some examples.  You may inherit certain alleles from your BPD parent and certain alleles from your non-BPD parent.  So now you have a different genotype from your BPD parent and it is possible that your particular genotype does not make you as susceptible to BPD as theirs did, because your personality is such that you are less sensitive, for example, as a result of your particular genotype.  It may be that in fact your particular genotype makes you more able to handle a challenging environment.  Or you may have exactly the same genotype as your BPD parent (really unlikely, but for the sake of argument) but because you environment was different its affects on things like gene expression were different and therefore you don't develop BPD.  If you're the child of non-BPD parents, you may simply have inherited a combination of alleles that, given the environment you grew up in, make you more susceptiblet to BPD, even though you had non-parents. What kind of environment would that be?  An invalidating environment, certainly, but this does not necessarily mean we could look at any particular environment and say, well, surely, their environment was fine so why did they develop it?  Their parents were wonderful and they had a great childhood, and their parents don't have BPD, so where's the genetic/environmental influence?  The point is we can't make those judgement about environment as it is not always that clear-cut.  There are many variables in environment and just because it seems good doesn't mean there weren't factors that influenced the development of BPD, factors that are subtle and not obvious to us.  These diseases are extremely complicated and we have a very poor understanding of the connection between genotype and environment precisely because of this - many genes play a role and environment is so varied and uncontrolled that it is very difficult to be able to say - if you have this gene or this environment, you have BPD.  

In my opinion, a neurochemical problem falls into the bins of genetic or environemtal cause of disease.  A genetic problem can cause a neurochemical problem (neurochemicals are simply proteins created from the instructions in genes, after all) or an environmental one (some perturbation to the environment has disrupted the process of protein production or the processes in which the protein is used).  This is why drugs can treat neurochemical problems such as bi-polar disorder.  However, the multi-factorial nature of a disease like BPD may be a reason why the drugs are not too effective with a BPD.  You've treated one part of the problem but its easy to imagine that the BPD will continue if you don't treat many of the things leading to the problem.  What if the BPD is not that sensitive to the part of the problem you've treated, i.e. yes, you've identified a factor influencing BPD but it's not the MAIN factor, or one of the most SIGNIFICANT factors?  What if there are compensatory processes that counteract the treatment you've provided (the cell is highly regulated and this is certainly a realistic possibility)?  What if there is no main factor but a bunch of genes that have subtle influences on your likelihood to get BPD, that in total give you a greater likelihood?  Without considering the combinatorics it's quite difficult to treat the multi-factorial disorders.  Paradoxically, the combinators also make it extremely difficult to understand the root cause of a disorder.  This is one of the reasons why drug research in general is facing problems right now.  

Scientific studies show that there are likely genetic components to BPD.  But that's all it is - a component.  All it means is that genes can influence the likelihood that you get the disease.  They don't pre-determine whether you get the disease.  No one could look at your genotype and say, ah, this is the BPD genotype.  They could say (theoretically) that you might have a higher likelihood of getting it if the environment were "favorable" for developing BPD (not that it's a good thing to develop BPD), but they cannot predict that you will or won't get it.  And environment is such a complicated thing to define that it is unlikely we could ever predict who would get BPD or not.  We can say that an invalidating environment leads to BPD, but we can't precisely define every environment that everone lives in.  Yes, sometimes it's obvious.  I can point to my own childhood and pretty definitively say it was invalidating, as can many members here.  But what about more subtle cases?  There is a range, right?  How do we define an environment making a person susceptiblet to BPD?  It's not clear-cut.  And these complications are the reason why kids can have BPD but their parents don't and vice versa.  But the science seems relatively clear - there are genetic components.  But they are not DETERMINISTIC components.    

Does this help at all or is it just confusing?

oneflewover:  I think there is something going on spiritually, too.  

boarderchic: Thank you for such an intelligent and comprehensive reply!  My goodness.  

In short, both nature and nurture (yes to the genetics) and in each person the combo is a bit different. As far as the nuture goes, it's not just parenting, but the total environment.