One of the first books published on borderline personality disorder was titled I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me, which is an apt way of summarizing what borderline personality disorder (BPD) entails. People sometimes mistakenly associate unstable back-and-forth moods with bipolar disorder—borderline personality disorder fits that M.O. more accurately. Borderline personality disorder is named such because early in its conception psychologists described patients with the condition as being on the borderline between neurosis (impaired functioning) and psychosis (losing touch with reality). Since then, some believe that “borderline” is a misnomer because this differentiation of mental illness is outdated and borderline personality disorder is a condition that has more to do with emotional instability and dysregulation. Also, some find the term stigmatizing. Nevertheless, “borderline personality disorder” continues to stick.

Borderline personality disorder treatment can be difficult to implement—it’s one of the most difficult personality disorders to treat because of the nature of its symptoms. Symptoms of borderline personality disorder include fear of abandonment, unstable self-image, back-and-forth extremes of love and hate in interpersonal relationships, unstable intense moods, impulsive behavior, high rejection sensitivity, and paranoid/delusional thinking. Patients may sometimes manipulate others in response to perceived rejection. They might engage in attention-seeking behavior like attempting suicide to prevent people from leaving them. Borderline personality disorder treatment is made difficult because patients might exhibit this behavior toward their therapists out of fear that their therapists will reject or abandon them. In response, therapists might unconsciously distance themselves emotionally from their patients.

Borderline personality disorder treatment mainly involves therapy. Borderline personality disorder has been found to have a high correlation with traumatic experiences like abuse, neglect, and separation. There are many different types of therapy available that focus on different aspects like building self-esteem, developing interpersonal skills, emotional regulation, modifying distorted thinking, and coping with environmental conflict and stress. There also appear to be biological factors that might contribute to borderline personality disorder—patients have an imbalance of neurotransmitters that deal with mood, and increased activation in parts of the brain dealing with fear and impulsivity/aggression. Medication is also available as a borderline personality disorder treatment, and it can treat distorted thinking, stabilize moods or treat the symptoms of co-morbid disorders like depression and anxiety that are common in patients.

More studies need to be conducted on borderline personality disorder treatment, as it is one of the least researched fields of clinical psychology, given the difficulty in doing so. However, treatment still continues to improve and so does the scientific perception of borderline personality disorder itself. The challenge of research is accommodating and building upon these factors.

Patients might look to alternative treatments for cancer because they are reluctant to undergo standard treatments like chemotherapy, or they’ve already tried standard treatments that don’t seem to be working. Sometimes alternative treatments for cancer appeal to the public because of their reputation for being natural, easier and less intense methods of treating cancer including pancreatic or lung cancer. It’s uncertain whether alternative treatments are better than standard ones—for some people they won’t work, and for other patients they might. Even if alternative treatments are effective, it’s important to remember that they’re alleviating the symptoms of cancer and not necessarily curing it. Doctors recommend not replacing standard treatments for cancer with alternative treatments because they might not be strong enough. Instead, they recommend that alternative treatments for cancer be treated like supplementary treatments that are used in addition to standard treatment. If standard treatment by itself isn’t helping, then the combination of standard and alternative might.

Some alternative treatments for cancer include acupuncture, aromatherapy, meditation, biofeedback (giving patient info about their physiological condition so they can have a sense of control over it), and hypnosis, massage, and relaxation techniques. The treatment suggested can depend on what symptom of cancer is being targeted such as anxiety, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, pain, sleeping problems and stress.

Any treatment is subject to the unique biological makeup of the patient, so different patients will react differently to any of these options. Treatments are also subject to the power of thinking. These days science is more open to the role of the mind in how the body functions and responds to events. For example, stress is now viewed as a valid contributing factor to illness, and the placebo effect suggests that people can get better simply from the belief that they are being treated. Reader’s Digest once covered a couple of patients who had overcome cancer in unusual ways—one of them got rid of cancer after constant prayer, another took a huge amount of vitamin supplements. Many would doubt the efficacy of these methods and a research trial would be potentially unethical and disastrous. Still, there have been many examples, both scientific and anecdotal, in which the way a person thinks can have a big impact on their outcome, even physically. The bottom line is that every patient needs to choose the treatment that’s right for them, and one that they also believe is right for them. Motivation is part of the healing process, and it should be a supplement to whatever treatment is implemented.

Some people are curious as to why other people smoke. Don’t they know that smoking causes lung cancer? Why would they suck and blow their lives away? Don’t they know they’ll get addicted and die? Don’t they realize that they’re blowing their yucky smoke at other people and exposing them to second hand smoking? These are common complaints that non smokers have about smokers, and why people smoke remains largely a mystery to them. Even if it’s a free country and we have smoking and non smoking sections, smoking still manages to cause controversy, because it brings up so many issues like health, science, media influence, economics, and freedom of choice.

Common reasons cited for why people smoke are the high they get from nicotine, peer pressure from others around them doing it, the glamorizing of smoking on the big screen and television, desire to lose weight and the inability to quit. It’s definitely true that these are factors that contribute to the choice to smoke, but this is an oversimplified viewpoint of cause and effect. People are a lot more complicated than that and everyone is different. We can only derive trends of smoking, not causes.

It might seem intuitive that smoking is bad for you, but technically research hasn’t shown that smoking causes cancer. This is because it’s seen as unethical to perform experiments in which people are asked to smoke and then monitored for the development of cancer. Research has suggested a strong correlation between smoking and cancer but research has often been plagued with real or perceived flaws in design, and so it remains largely inconclusive. Yet the idea that smoking is bad for you remains somewhat common sense, and it’s also inconclusive why people smoke in the first place, at least in an official sense.

Critics of smoking might have you believe that just one cigarette will have you addicted for life, but everyone’s biological makeup is different and while nicotine is highly addictive, you can’t say for sure whether someone will become heavily addicted or not. Still, it seems that many people suffer from addiction and eventually develop cancer as well. Other criticisms are directed at tobacco companies, which are accused by some of profiting off of death and minimizing the dangers of smoking. In any case, smoking is a significant part of our economy and it won’t go away anytime soon even if we want it to.

In the end, smoking is a personal choice, and as simple as it seems, that’s the reason why people smoke and other people don’t, and there will be some who suffer from it and some who don’t. It seems the best way to get along is for smokers to keep their smoking confined and for non smokers to avoid smoking areas, which seems like a form of segregation. But segregation inevitably comes with diversity and differences of opinion, the hallmark of American society.