While people with PDs can possess very different personality disturbances, they have at least one thing in common: chances are their mental illness will not remit without professional intervention. However, exactly what that intervention should consist of remains a subject for debate. This, along with the disorders' notoriety for being problematic to treat, has posed challenges to their successful resolution, or at least management. "[People with] personality disorders exhibit chronic, pervasive problems getting along with people in all kinds of different contexts," says Thomas R. Lynch, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Duke University and the Duke University Medical Center. "And this includes therapists." As a result, people with the disorders often don't seek treatment, and those who do often drop out, he says. For example, people with borderline personality disorder (BPD)--the most commonly treated personality disorder--quit treatment programs about 70 percent of the time.
