Borderline symptom inventory: assessing inpatient and outpatient borderline personality disorders.

The Borderline Symptom Inventory (BSI), a 52-item self-report inventory, was administered to cohorts of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD), affective disorder and a normal control sample. The study failed to demonstrate that the inventory could effectively discriminate either ambulatory or hospitalized BPD patients from those with affective disorders, but that the inventory could correctly specify a control group without a psychiatric disorder. The results suggest that it is premature to utilize the BSI as a reliable screen to detect BPD.