Panel Discussion 35 - Mitigating the Stigma of Borderline Personality Disorder in Clinical Psychological Practice and Research

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a life-threatening disorder in great need of empirical and clinical attention. It is also heavily stigmatized, with clinicians and researchers endorsing inaccurate and pejorative views about the disorder. While many destigmatizing efforts have concentrated on the attitudes of laypeople and clinicians, researchers are rarely challenged for their role in propagating BPD stigma. Nonetheless, stigma permeates academic work. In recently published peer-reviewed texts, people with BPD are pejoratively labelled “manipulative” and “attention seeking” despite a lack of empirical evidence, and hypothetical BPD traits in women have been used to evaluate how much “craziness” men are “willing to tolerate” depending on women’s attractiveness (Blanchard et al., 2021). This academic stigma has the potential to shape treatment, diagnosis, and public perception of BPD detrimentally. Therefore, challenging BPD stigma in academia is essential if researchers and clinicians are to serve the needs of people with BPD. This panel brings together leading clinicians and researchers focused on the nature and treatment of BPD, including scholars with lived experience of BPD, who seek to combat harmful, unscientific rhetoric about BPD. Panelists come from a diverse range of sexual, racial, and disability-based backgrounds which intersect with their direct and vicarious experiences of stigma in BPD research. Panelists will discuss the multiple domains in which BPD stigma operates in clinical psychological research and identify solutions to promote a more scientific and compassionate academic climate for those with BPD. Topics will include how BPD stigma manifests at the personal, public, and institutional levels; how various forms of marginalization and BPD stigma intersect; and ways in which BPD stigma may influence clinical training and research design, implementation, and dissemination. The session will emphasize specific recommendations for how researchers, reviewers, and editors can mitigate stigma in research and academic settings, and thereby produce more robust BPD research – and ultimately improve quality of life for people with BPD and those close to them.