Detecting individuals with borderline personality disorder in the community: an ascertainment strategy and comparison with a hospital sample.

Most empirical research on borderline personality disorder (BPD) draws its participant pool from clinical samples. Individuals with BPD recruited from clinical settings, however, may represent a unique subset of those with the illness. The present study sought to determine (a) whether individuals with diagnosable BPD could be readily ascertained from the community and (b) how such individuals would compare to those drawn from a clinical setting on various dimensions. We found that the clinical sample showed a somewhat more severe expression of illness, a different pattern of BPD symptoms, somewhat greater Axis I comorbidity, and more medication and prior hospitalization than the community sample. On other clinical dimensions (e.g., depression, anxiety, dissociation, positive and negative affect) however, the two groups were quite similar. Results suggest that some research questions might be addressed better with participants from community samples, while others might be better suited to clinical samples.