Emotional abuse and neglect can cause equivalent or worse trauma symptoms compared to trauma survivors who have only experienced or witnessed violence. Both non-violent and violent traumatic experiences are associated with the emergence of personality disorders.

Childhood mistreatment is highly linked with most personality disorders. 85% of persons struggling with a personality disorder have disclosed encountering a adverse childhood event. 73% revealed experiencing abuse and 82% disclosed experiencing neglect. The earlier people experience either emotional or physical neglect during childhood, the more likely they are to develop dissociative and depressive symptoms.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has the strongest correlation with adverse childhood experiences. Persons with BPD have revealed experiencing an average of 13 times more adverse childhood experiences than persons without BPD.

Most efficacious therapies for people who struggle with personality disorders take a long time and cost a lot of money. 20 to 56% of clients diagnosed with personality disorders are also diagnosed with trauma. They disclose experiencing many traumatic events during childhood with abuse (73%) and neglect being the highest (82%).

Trauma is regularly under-diagnosed for persons who have challenges with personality disorders, which hinders them from receiving trauma-focused treatments. Their immense symptoms such as emotional dysregulation and suicidality tend to obscure trauma symptoms. Unresolved traumatic memories appear to worsen and preserve personality disorders.

In a randomized controlled trial, 65.5% of clients were no longer diagnosed with PTSD after 12 sessions of EMDR therapy, and 73.1% did not have the diagnosis three months after EMDR treatment.

Multiple studies have shown that EMDR therapy is safe and effective for clients who struggle with suicidal thoughts. EMDR therapy typically reduces suicidal thoughts, even with less than 10 EMDR therapy sessions.

A randomized controlled trial found that after only five EMDR therapy reprocessing sessions, most clients' personality disorder symptoms significantly diminished, with most of the decrease happening in the first three sessions. This was the first study, which was published in 2024, to investigate the effectiveness of EMDR therapy with clients diagnosed only with personality disorders (excluding those with a trauma diagnosis). Most clients improved their mental health and reduced their suicidal thoughts, but 2% of clients' mental health worsened and suicidal thoughts increased.

EMDR therapy is effective at diminishing trauma symptoms for persons with personality disorders, regardless if they were diagnosed with PTSD or have not witnessed or have experienced violence.