Psychosocial Functioning over Time

Social and vocational functioning are extremely important outcomes. This chapter details the findings of four sub-studies concerning this area. In all of these studies, borderline patients showed areas of strength. However, remitted borderline patients functioned better than non-remitted borderline patients at six-year follow-up, while the borderline patients on disability functioned more poorly than borderline patients never on disability at 10-year follow-up. Believing that we had been too optimistic about the psychosocial functioning of borderline patients early in the study, we changed the definition to include full-time work or school at 10-year follow-up. This change resulted in 60% rather than 82% achieving this goal. Finally, we compared the rates of marriage and being a parent of recovered and non-recovered borderline patients at 16-year follow-up, finding that recovered borderline patients were more likely to achieve stability in these areas.