Prevalence of borderline personality disorder and its association with demographic factors among university students of Pakistan

Abstract

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a psychological disorder, which could cause severe problems in self-functioning, emotion regulation, and interpersonal relationships. This study aimed to assess BPD among university students and evaluating the association of BPD with demographic factors among the students. Three private sector universities were selected from Lahore. A cross-sectional survey was conducted by using questionnaire composed of demographic factors (gender, age and university) and Borderline Personality Inventory (BPI- cut 20). An estimated data of 700 undergraduates was collected through stratified sampling technique. The collected data was analyzed through SPSS (Version 17). There were (46%) males and (54%) female participants, whose mean age was 21 ± 1.81 years, at the time of data collection. The findings indicated, BPD (≥10) in majority (62%) of the participants. BPD was more prevalent among the age group of 18-21 years. Application of the Chi-square test confirmed non-significant association (p < 0.05) between age, and gender, with BPD. The strength of the relationship was assessed through the odds ratio (OR). Association between gender and BPD (OR= 1.026, CI= 0.755-1.392) and age and BPD (OR= 0.880, CI= 0.637-1.216), university and BPD (OR= 0.531, CI=0.381-0.742) reported a statistically significant association with BPD (p<0.001). Further the Logistic regression affirmed, impact of rank, of the educational institution (university) had significant effect on prevalence of BPD. Therefore, it is concluded that students (young adults) are more at risk of being affected by BPD, who are studying in the universities with higher socio-economic status. So, it can be supposed that environment (rank, location and circumstances) of the university is one of the dominating factors playing a significant role in the prevalence of BPD among young adults.