Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) share overlapping neurobiological mechanisms, particularly reward deficiency and stress-like anti-reward processes. The authors propose reclassifying BPD as a "traumatic personality stress disorder" (TPSD) to unify therapeutic strategies that may stabilize dopaminergic reward function, such as psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT). They argue that PAT could treat trauma-induced personality disorders by addressing these shared mechanisms. Reframing BPD as TPSD may lead to more effective, personalized interventions, reduce stigma, and improve understanding of underlying mechanisms, benefiting conditions characterized by anhedonia, negative affect, hypervigilance, and dissociation.
About 70% of chronic neuropathic pain patients do not respond to opioids or other conventional analgesics. A growing body of clinical observations over the past decade suggests that psychedelic drugs may help understand and treat chronic pain conditions. This review presents a theoretical framework for the neuroscience-based mechanisms of psychedelics' potential analgesic effects, covering studies on psychedelics for physical and emotional pain, neuro-restorative effects on impaired brain connectivity and dendritic plasticity, anti-neuroinflammatory and pro-immunomodulatory actions, and safety, legal, and ethical considerations. Including psychedelics in the analgesic toolkit could also deepen insights into comorbid psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety.