Sleep and borderline personality disorder: a review

Abstract

Sleep problems are very common among psychiatric patients. Borderline personality disorder, as a common and severe mental disorder, is associated with different types of sleep disturbances, such as disturbances of sleep continuity, altered REM sleep regulation and nightmares. These disturbances are the result of interaction of the personality traits, concomitant and comorbid diseases and environmental factors. Despite the high prevalence of sleep related disorders in BPD patients, this aspect of BPD is still neglected in clinical and research settings. To date there has been little agreement on sleep characteristics of BPD among different studies, and presence of some uncontrolled confounding factors, make interpretation of the results difficult. However, it seems that appropriate diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders in BPD patients might lead to better outcome. This article aimed to review the current literature of sleep studies in BPD. Some recommendations and suggestions were made for future researches in this field.

Keywords: Borderline personality disorder; Polysomnography; Sleep.