Case Study Rachel Reiland

Rachel Reiland, a mother of two children who are barely even toddlers, wife to a faithful and devoted husband, found out she had borderline personality disorder in the nick time. Borderline personality disorder is a psychological disorder that involves mood, behavior and relationship instability. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorder V, the patient needs to have at least three impulsive type symptoms, and at least two borderline type symptoms to be considered for a BPD diagnosis. Rachel’s had almost all of the impulsive type symptoms but her most frequent ones were 1 acting unexpectedly without thinking, 2 attempting to argue as often as possible whenever she was criticized—which led to conflicts with other people, and 3 the unstable and unusual
Her impulsive mannerism of acting without thinking was often seen whenever she would go running really late at night, in dangerous settings. When she did get around to thinking, she wanted to run those places in hopes of getting herself killed. She would find the littlest of things to quarrel over with Tim. She never intended to see him as the enemy but whenever he did something that was not in accordance with her trusted perspective, she would form a wall of distaste for him. This wall never stayed up for too long but it was there long to do some damage.
The most extreme symptom of BPD experienced by Rachel was unstable mood or borderline rage. In any ideal moment, Rachel would start out in a neutral or excited mood, which would immediately flip to full resentment of the subject, and involved partied at hand. One striking example of this was when Rachel hit her son. A