The Future

Hope for the Future

For the person with borderline disorder, and for those who love them, learning to live as fulfilling a life as possible with the disorder at times can be a struggle. Even though you know that the most successful approach is to do the best you can with what each day offers, you may get weary and discouraged.

You may wonder if you really can make it through the rest of your life under these circumstances. More than anything else, this website is about your doing significantly better and maintaining a realistic sense of hopefulness. But as you continue to learn how to deal better with the effects of borderline disorder on your life, how do you maintain this healthy level of optimism?

There are several reasons for you to remain very hopeful about your future:

  • The attention focused by the public, mental health care professionals, and health care organizations on borderline disorder is in the early stages of very significant and positive growth. If you would like to read more about the reasons for this growing recognition of borderline disorder click here. (Clicking on this link will open a PDF article in a new window.)
  • There is a growing recognition of the seriousness and prevalence of borderline disorder by agencies and organizations that can influence the resources available to help you. Making contact with the following organizations will enable you to readily access these resources:
  • As a result of research on borderline disorder, the types and effectiveness of treatments for the disorder continue to increase at an accelerating rate. These new and effective treatments for borderline disorder will improve the quality of your life now.
  • Increasing amounts of research focused on borderline disorder is the ultimate reason for hope. Each year, more research dollars are spent on understanding the causes, nature and more effective treatments of the disorder. In medicine, we never know when the next significant scientific breakthroughs will occur. As research in the area of borderline disorder progresses in quantity and in breadth, small gains will merge and result in large advances. These in turn will enable us to develop earlier and more effective interventions, and ultimately even preventions. Because borderline disorder has a genetic as well as an environmental basis, it may be some time before we are able to identify, then reverse, the genetic problems. But I believe that the time will come, most likely in the lifetimes of those of you who are relatively young, when this will begin to happen.