Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) report experiencing inner states related to having a negative identity less often over time. This according to a recent study with 2 objectives. The first was to determine the levels of identity disturbance reported by 290 patients with BPD and 72 personality-disordered comparison subjects over 20 years of prospective follow-up. The second aim was to describe the levels of identity disturbance reported by 152 ever recovered vs 138 never recovered borderline patients over 20 years of prospective follow-up. Researchers found:

• Borderline patients reported levels of these states that were >3 times higher than personality-disordered comparison subjects, with both groups demonstrating significant declines in these states over time.
• For 3 of these inner states (“I feel like I am worthless,” “I feel like a complete failure,” and “I feel like I am evil”), recovered borderline patients had lower baseline scores and significantly different patterns of decline than non-recovered patients.
• For the fourth state, “I feel like I am a bad person,” recovered patients had lower scores over time, but the groups declined at the same rate.