A nurse in an outpatient mental health center is caring for a client. Exhibits For each potential assessment finding, click to specify if the finding is consistent with paranoid personality disorder or borderline personality disorder. Each finding may support more than 1 personality disorder or none at all. There must be at least 1 selection in every column. There does not need to be a selection in every row.

Rationale: Relationship status: BPD is marked by instability in relationships, often due to intense fear of abandonment or difficulty managing emotional attachments. Sudden breakups or conflict with close partners are common, especially during emotional crises. Concerns about coworkers: Individuals with PPD often misinterpret benign actions of others as malicious or threatening. Persistent beliefs that others are conspiring against them—despite little or no evidence—are core features of the disorder. Client statement: Impulsivity is a diagnostic criterion for BPD. Risky behaviors like sudden, financially irresponsible purchases are driven by difficulty regulating emotion and can reflect an effort to escape negative feelings. Skin alterations: Recurrent self-harm (e.g., superficial cutting) is a hallmark of BPD, typically used to cope with overwhelming emotional distress, feelings of emptiness, or perceived rejection or abandonment. Behavior pattern: Blunted affect and lack of improvement may reflect emotional withdrawal seen in both BPD and PPD. In BPD, emotional dysregulation underlies these symptoms; in PPD, chronic mistrust can lead to guarded, affectively flat behavior and resistance to help.