Imipramine treatment of borderline children: case reports with a controlled study.

The authors discuss the borderline syndrome of childhood, review the pertinent literature, and present three case histories demonstrating the salient features of the clinical syndrome. Each patient failed to benefit from intensive hospital treatment until imipramine (5 mg/kg/day) was added to the treatment regimen. One child was treated in a double-blind, imipramine-placebo crossover protocol. Substantial improvement with imipramine was demonstrated in adaptive peer interactions, compliance, and bizarre behaviors. This strongly supports consideration of imipramine a part of the intensive inpatient treatment of the borderline syndrome in children.