Empirical criteria that differentiating between Bipolar Illness and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): Using sexual trauma, self-cutting/self-harm and soft psychotic symptoms Multiple studies (see below) show that approximately two thirds of those diagnosed with BPD have a history of sexual trauma, as compared to 25-30% of those diagnosed with Bipolar, and …

How and when did “Borderline Personality” get into the DSM?” The term “borderline personality” was first proposed in the United States by psychoanalyst Adolph Stern in 1938, an early proponent of Freudian psychoanalytic theory in this country followed by psychoanalyst Richard Knight who further promoted the concept. They described a …

Part II What is normal? The popularization of the term “adult ADHD” belies the conclusions of the medical research reviewed below. If this research had been as well publicized, we may not be having the present conversation. Here, I swim against the tsunami of “ADHD” hegemony. Valid diagnoses get lost …

Part I Attention deficit is what I consider to be one of the “sacred cows” of psychiatry along with Borderline Personality (discussed in another post). They are both misunderstood, overdiagnosed, and poorly validated especially in adults. Here I will focus on underpublicized, underappreciated, and forgotten clinical studies that have yet …

Here’s the Hard Part for Clinicians – How to recognize what is NOT a “major depressive disorder” It has been documented since Kraepelin’s classification in the early 20th century to the present, that up to 60% of all mood illness presentations are really “mixed states” or “mixed episodes” i.e., not …

“Melancholia is the beginning and part of mania…The development of mania is really a worsening of the disease (melancholia) rather than a change into another disease.” -Aretaeus of Cappadocia ca. 100 AD No, they are not the same. Kraepelin’s original unifying concept of recurrent depression plus what is now called …