Focus Area: Borderline Personality Disorder
Overview: The Borderline Symptom List 23 (BSL-23) is a standardized assessment of symptoms typically associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD) that can be used as a screening tool as well as a treatment monitoring tool for DBT and related treatments for BPD.
Total number of items: Twenty three
Standardized cadence: Weekly
Estimated completion time: Three to five minutes
Supported subscales: None
Age range: Variable
Scoring and interpretation: The BSL-23 consists of a single score that is used to track overall severity of borderline symptoms over time. There is no formal cut off score identified for the scale.
Total scores range from 0-92 with higher scores indicating more severe symptoms.
Each question is answered on a 5-point Likert scale from "Not at all" (0) to "Very strong" (4).
Reliability/Validity: The internal consistency has been shown to be good, with Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.93 to 0.97. The BSL-23 clearly discriminated borderline personality disorder patients from patients with an axis I diagnosis (mean effect sizes was 1.13), and comparisons before and after 3 months of dialectical behavior therapy revealed a numerically larger effect size for the BSL-23 (d = 0.47).
Additional information: The BSL-23 also includes a single item assessing global well-being. Results from this item are not included in the total score, and can be used as descriptive feedback on overall patient well-being above and beyond their overall symptom severity.
The BSL-23 is also available in Spanish on the Blueprint platform.
Citation:
Bohus, M., Kleindienst, N., Limberger, M. F., Stieglitz, R.-D., Domsalla, M., Chapman, A. L., Steil, R., Philipsen, A., & Wolf, M. (2009). The short version of the Borderline Symptom List (BSL-23): Development and initial data on psychometric properties. Psychopathology, 42(1), 32–39. https://doi.org/10.1159/000173701