Parents’ Experiences of an Adolescent Child with Borderline Personality Disorder: A Narrative Analysis

Based on in-depth interviews with 31 family members of young adults with borderline personality disorder (BPD), this study examines how parents processed and responded to worrisome acts of their adolescent daughters, i.e., running away, overdosing, suicide attempts, conflict, and violence in the time prior to and soon after the teen received a BPD diagnosis. This research contributes to qualitative research through two complementary narrative analyses. Structural analysis of narratives allows for a close understanding of how parents processed, understood, and acted in response to their adolescent in mental health distress. Following Labov (1997), the analysis tracks complicating events, resolutions, evaluations, and codas; doing so reveals that parents registered first a quantitative and then a qualitative difference in their child’s acts from normalized adolescent rebellion but did not use a mental health framework prior to receiving a BPD from mental health professionals. The concept of “vital conjunctures” (Johnson-Hanks 2002, p. 865) offers a heuristic vantage point to reconsider the narratives and deepen awareness of parental perspectives when the stakes concerning the teenager are high. It is hoped that the research findings of parents’ experiences, agencies, and perspectives on BPD in relation to their adolescent recognize the extraordinary mental health conditions and underscore the value of early interventions that supportively engage caregivers and effectively aid the young person’s and the family’s recovery.