Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorders: a descriptive comparison of psychopathological aspects in patients discharged from an Italian Inpatient Unit using PANSS and BPRS.

BACKGROUND There is current scientific debate in consideration of the possibility to consider the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as a mood disorder within the bipolar spectrum furthermore, authors reported about the challenging differential diagnosis of BPD and Bipolar Disorder (BD). SUBJECTS AND METHODS 32 patients hospitalized in the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit in Perugia, discharged with a diagnosis of BD or BPD, were included. Factor analyses of BPRS and PANSS items were performed. Association between socio-demographic, clinical and psychopathological variables was tested using bivariate analyses. RESULTS Factor analysis identified 6 Factors, explaining 67.6% of the variance, interpreted as follow: 1) Euphoric Mania, 2) Psychosis, 3) Inhibited Depression, 4) Disorganization, 5) Psychosomatic features, and 6) Mixed features. Bivariate analyses identified statistically significant differences between BPD and BD according to: PANSS positive symptoms domain, BPRS total score, Euphoric Mania and Disorganization. No statistically significant differences came up on socio-demographic and clinical aspects. CONCLUSION Even though the sample is small, interesting findings came out from our investigation. Our findings are in line with the current literature. Euphoric mood, is one of the aspects which best differentiated BD from BPD. Higher scores in Disorganization, BPRS and PANSS positive symptoms in BD may be related to the fact that our sample is a group of patients from an acute inpatient unit, so the impact of the symptoms severity for BD may be remarkable.