Objective: To review the literature on quality of life (QoL) in borderline personality disorder (BPD) by examining the use of QoL instruments, the extent of QoL impairments in BPD, and the impact of treatment on QoL in BPD.
Methods: Studies were identified through PubMed and PsycINFO searches for articles from 1980 to 2011 using the following keywords: quality of life OR health-related quality of life OR QOL OR HRQOL AND borderline personality disorder. We focused our search on studies that actually measured QoL. Two authors agreed independently on including 25 studies that met specific selection criteria.
Results: The data on QoL in BPD are still sparse, with high heterogeneity in the instruments used to measure QoL, which decreases the comparability of existing studies. EQ-5D, WHOQOL, SF-36, Satisfaction Profile, and Q-LESQ have been utilized as QoL measures in BPD research. The reviewed studies uniformly demonstrated grave impairments in QoL of BPD patients. The available evidence indicates that BPD treatments improve not only psychiatric symptoms but also QoL, as shown by psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy studies. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether current treatments are able to restore QoL to community norms.
Conclusions: QoL is gaining more importance as an outcome measure of psychiatric interventions. Research evidence confirms that QoL is seriously impaired in BPD and that QoL improves with treatment. Further research is needed to build a consensus on the utilization of QoL measures and to improve their validity in BPD. More importantly, future studies need to develop and test interventions to improve QoL in BPD.