<p>Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder And Borderline Personality Disorder In Adults: A Review Of Their Links And Risks</p>

Abstract

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) are particularly common disorders, that are highly comorbid in adult populations. The symptomatic overlap between adult ADHD and BPD includes impulsivity, emotional dysregulation and interpersonal impairment, which makes the differential diagnosis difficult. Our review aims at focusing on recent data on the comorbid ADHD+BPD form, as well as the risk factors involved in the emergence of the two disorders. While adult ADHD and BPD share some genetic and temperamental risk factors, adult ADHD is characterized by more severe trait-impulsivity compared to non-comorbid BPD; BPD patients display more severe trait-emotion regulation symptoms compared to non-comorbid ADHD. Patients with the comorbid ADHD+BPD form have severe symptoms in both dimensions. Early-life exposure to adverse events is a shared risk factor for the development of ADHD and BPD, but type and timing of adversity seem to play a differential role in the development of BPD and ADHD symptoms. Age of onset used to be a discriminative diagnostic criterion between ADHD, an early-onset neurodevelopmental disorder, and BPD, a late-onset psychological disorder. However, this distinction has been recently called into question, increasing the need for more research aiming at delineating the disorders from a developmental and clinical standpoint. Clinicians should carefully consider the comorbidity, and consider ADHD and BPD dimensionally, in order to provide more effective patient management. This might improve early preventive interventions, and treatment for comorbid conditions in adulthood.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Increases Nicotine Addiction Severity in Adults Seeking Treatment for Substance Use Disorders: The Role of Personality Disorders

“…ADHD and personality disorders such as ASP and BPD share core features of impulse control deficits with ADHD generally preceding the onset of ASP and BPD [25, 26]. While their common neurobiological underpinnings are not well understood and form a source of current research interest [27], the associations among these phenotypes have been well documented [26, 28-30]. It has been proposed that ADHD may be a precursor or prodromal stage of disorders such as BPD and ASP [26, 31].…”

ADHD and the Importance of Comorbid Disorders in the Psychosocial Development of Children and Adolescents

“…The symptom overlapping between ADHD and BPD for adults includes impulsiveness, emotional dysregulation and interpersonal impairment, a fact that makes differential diagnosis difficult. BPD concerns 1.6% of the general population, while 14% of the ADHD children will later be diagnosed with BPD [40]. The incidence of Impulse Control Personality Disorders in girls is almost half and these disorders often constitute the main reason of referring boys for evaluation.…”

Longitudinal Associations Between Cognitive Deficits in Childhood and Psychopathological Symptoms in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

“…Second, we aimed to investigate whether individual cognitive domains in childhood distinctively associate with specific psychopathological symptoms in young people. We hypothesized that working memory and inhibition would be associated with psychotic experiences, given that executive function is one of the most commonly observed deficits among individuals with schizophrenia through various stages of the disease, 12 and that attention would be associated with depression, 13 BPD, 14 and hypomania. 15…”