Differentiating symptom clusters of borderline personality disorder.

This study is an attempt to delineate symptom clusters that may be considered most distinctive of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Medical records were examined to assess the extent to which each of the eight DSM-III-R BPD criteria was present in 89 psychiatric in-patients diagnosed with BPD. Structural analysis revealed three symptom clusters that can explain symptomatology for a majority of the sample. BPD patients can be identified initially by a core factor and separated subsequently into several BPD subtypes based on the patients' remaining symptomatology. A hierarchical diagnostic scheme for delineating BPD subtypes is proposed, and the implications of these findings for a theoretical separation of several BPD subtypes are discussed.