Engendering misunderstanding: autism and borderline personality disorder

Conclusion: Clinicians must be encouraged to pursue thorough differential diagnoses, especially for women and transgender individuals who experience emotional lability with self-harm.KEY POINTSAutism is underdiagnosed in girls, women, and transgender individuals due both to diagnostic bias, and the quieter, less visible signs and symptoms of female autism.As females are so adept at camouflaging difference, distress generally only becomes manifest during mid childhood and adolescence, when mental illness gets misidentified as primary cause.Early mood difficulties often transform into more serious distress with emotional lability and self-harm. This can get misrecognised as borderline personality disorder, causing preventable harm.Borderline personality disorder is something that clinicians often feel they can recognise immediately, increasing the need to consciously think about differential diagnoses especially when presented with females who self-injure.PMID:36927347 | DOI:10.1080/13651501.2023.2187843
Source: International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: research