Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall is known as much for his headline-grabbing troubles off the field as he is for his standout play on it. If he has his way, he’s about to be famous for something else entirely.
In a recent press conference, Marshall told reporters that he suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD), a mental illness marked by intense anger, impulsivity, and turbulent interpersonal relationships.
The 27-year-old wide receiver—who received his diagnosis this spring, after seeking treatment at McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Mass.—told reporters he wants to be the “face” of BPD. “My purpose moving forward is to raise awareness of this disorder—how it not only affects the patient but the families and the people in the community,” he said.
Marshall certainly has his work cut out for him. Although an estimated 2% of U.S. adults are affected by the disorder, it remains poorly understood, even among mental health professionals.
That’s partly because the symptoms of BPD can look a lot like those of other mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia. (The term “borderline,” in fact, arose because psychiatrists originally conceived of BPD as occupying the border between psychosis and neurosis, two broad categories of mental illness that aren’t as widely used today.)
BPD can be especially difficult to identify and diagnose because some of the disorder’s hallmarks—including mood swings and intense fears of abandonment—are, in less severe forms, considered to be “normal” human emotions and behavior, says Chris Cargile, MD, a psychiatrist at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, in Bryan.
“Most of the things we talk about in personality disorders we see in everybody,” says Dr. Cargile, who has not treated Marshall and cannot comment on the specifics of his case. “The reason we have the word ‘disorder’ is when those things become problematic. It’s when the intensity level rises to the point where you can’t hold a relationship together for more than a few hours or days, because you can’t trust anybody.”
BPD often manifests in “severe eruptions of depression,” distrust of other people that verges on paranoia, and “frantic” efforts to avoid abandonment, Dr. Cargile says.
Suicidal threats and attempts are common; the completed suicide rate in people with BPD is as high as 10%, according to a review of the disorder, published in May in the New England Journal of Medicine, that coincidentally was written by John Gunderson, MD, a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital who has spoken with Marshall about his condition.
Underlying much of this volatile behavior are an unstable self-image and a pattern of “black-and-white” thinking, Dr. Gunderson writes, which can lead to sudden, dramatic switches between feelings of “idealization” and “devaluation” regarding others.
