Drawing the Boundaries Around Borderline Personality Disorder: A Science Mapping Study

<p><strong>Objective: </strong>The objective of this study was to conduct a bibliometric investigation of borderline personality disorder (BPD) including performance analysis, science mapping, and network visualization. <strong>Methods: </strong>Publications relating to BPD were retrieved from the Web of Science&trade; by entering the term &ldquo;borderline personality disorder(all-fields)&rdquo; and analyzed with the Bibliometrix.. R<strong>esults: </strong>A total of 10,368 documents on BPD were published from 1980 to 2022. Publication volume increased by an average annual rate of 13.7%. The total number of citations of the period was 361,184, with an average citation per document of 34.8. Articles in &ldquo;medical&rdquo; journals tended to cite articles in the &ldquo;medical&rdquo; ones, while those in &ldquo;psychological&rdquo; journals did the same with their &ldquo;psychological&rdquo; counterparts. The list of the most cited articles includes predominantly studies on several modalities of psychotherapy for BPD. Articles about psychotherapy formed a separate co-citation cluster from the main body of publications and authors with stronger research imprinting on cognitive, dialectical, and mentalization- and schema-based psychotherapies formed a separate cluster from other authors, possibly reflecting the pivotal role played by psychotherapies in the treatment of BPD.&nbsp; European countries collaborated among themselves, while the USA stood relatively apart. German, Dutch, and Swiss institutions, headed by the Heidelberg University, cooperated mainly among themselves while the USA ones formed separated networks around Harvard University. <strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our results indicate that research on BPD is a conceptually and thematically heterogeneous, geographically and institutionally diversified, integrated collaborative enterprise.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>