The loneliness of personality disorder: a phenomenological study
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-04-2017-0020 |
| Date | 14 August 2017 |
| Published date | 14 August 2017 |
| Pages | 213-221 |
| Author | Olivia Sagan |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Social inclusion |
The loneliness of personality disorder:
a phenomenological study
Olivia Sagan
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experience of loneliness amongst people who have
been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Design/methodology/approach –The research used a narrative phenomenological approach.
Findings –The study found that the loneliness experienced amongst this group of participants was
perceived to have taken root in childhood and was not a transient state. Its endurance, however, had led
participants to develop a number of strategies as means by which to manage what was felt to be a deep
seated painful sense of emptiness; some of these strategies were, however, risky or harmful.
Research limitations/implications –Limitations of the study include the absence of longitudinal
data which would have offered the opportunity for the close study of how people manage the experience
over time.
Practical implications –The study has practical im plications for mental h ealth professionals wi shing to
better understand the difficulties faced by individuals with the characteristics described, but it also
highlights the resilience of sufferers who, while living with acute loneliness continue to explore ways of
managing it.
Social implications –The study brings to the attention that the connectivity and sociability required and
expected in today’s society emphasise the lack of lonely individuals, further stigmatising loneliness as deficit
and taboo.
Originality/value –The paper offers a welcome addition to loneliness studies in its adherence to the
phenomenological experience and offers a small corrective to the bulk of existing loneliness studies which,
while valuable have been more attentive to exploring the constituent elements of loneliness than the lived
experience of it.
Keywords Narrative, Borderline personality disorder, Loneliness, Phenomenology
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Until Fromm-Reichman’s seminal paper in 1959, there had been a neglect in psychology of the
experience of loneliness one that represented no less than a “glaring deficiency”Mijuskovic
(2012, p. 128). However, loneliness is now most certainly under scrutiny, unsurprisingly given a
perceived increase in loneliness in post-democratic (Crouch, 2004) society, with its default
towards considering the metrics of human conditions such as loneliness in terms of economic
cost. This increase has to suggestions that we are entering “a post-social condition”
(Monbiot, 2014) with the hold of loneliness on citizens of neoliberal economies (Verhaeghe, 2014)
part of a pervasive emphasis on individuality (Sønderby, 2013) that is now of great interest.
Within psychology, literature (Heinrich and Gullone, 2006) presents compelling evidence of a
correlation between loneliness and poor health that lent support to policy moves begun in the
1990s towards building and strengthening social capital and to later neoliberal approaches to
health and social care (Ferragina and Arrigini, 2016). There are warnings of cognitive decline as a
result of loneliness (Gow et al., 2007; McKenzie and Harpham, 2006; Morgan and Swann, 2004);
of increased mortality (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010, 2015); of elevated vascular resistance and
blood pressure (Hawkley et al., 2010); increased depressive symptomatology (Cacioppo,
Hawkley and Thisted, 2010); and faster mental decline in older adults (Wilson et al., 2007).
Olivia Sagan is based at the
Department of Psychology,
Queen Margaret University
Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
DOI 10.1108/MHSI-04-2017-0020 VOL. 21 NO. 4 2017, pp. 213-221, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308
j
MENTALHEALTH AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
j
PAG E 21 3
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