Like many people, Bethany Purves , a 23-year-old writer living in England, had been idly watching Johnny Depps defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard .

At least, she was up to a point. Eventually, she had to turn it off: It was upsetting to hear the intimate accounts of the couples four-year relationship. Depp and Heard each claim the other was physically and emotionally abusive.

Even if you arent looking for clips on YouTube or watching on Court TV, its hard to escape the trial online. The case is a sensitive, nuanced one, centered on serious claims of domestic abuse and violence. But on Twitter and TikTok, its been reduced to a viral sideshow . On both platforms, Depp supporters and casual viewers of the trial have used excerpts from Heards testimony to mock her through memes and lip-sync videos .

Purves panicked when she read in a tweet that Depps legal team had brought in a forensic psychologist who claimed that Heard had borderline personality disorder , or BPD.

I was like, Oh, no. I know what many people think of Heard, and BPD is already a very misunderstood and highly stigmatized condition, Purves told HuffPost. I knew the combination would result in BPD and abuse being linked, since this is the first time a lot of people have heard about BPD.

Weve made some progress, on a societal level, toward recognizing and normalizing certain mental health issues, but stigma and misunderstanding around many diagnoses still exist. Most people, for example, have a fairly decent understanding of what anxiety and depression entail. Unfortunately, that isnt the case for BPD and it can lead people to assume the worst.

BPD is a mental disorder that affects how a person feels and sees themselves in the world, said Ziv Cohen, the founder and medical director of Principium Psychiatry and a forensic and clinical psychiatrist. (Cohen, like the other mental health professionals interviewed in this story, has not treated Heard.)

If you have borderline personality disorder, you tend to see the world in extremes, such as all good or all bad. This can create chaos in personal relationships, as the intimate partner of the person with BPD oscillates from being good to bad, from savior to hater, Cohen told HuffPost.

People with BPD usually experience fears of abandonment in their relationships, and worry about others abandoning them even with no objective evidence to support it. (That heightened fear of rejection is often tied to past trauma in childhood .)

This kind of frantic, impulsive behavior tends to push others away and lead to fractured relationships, Cohen said. Generally, people with BPD have chronic feelings of emptiness, tend to be impulsive, and are at risk for other conditions like mood disorders, he added.

People who live with BPD also have a hard time regulating their emotions its been said that living with BPD is like existing with no emotional skin.

One potentially positive aspect is that those intense emotions often translate into great creativity and empathy, according to Lauren Kerwin , a psychologist who specializes in depression, anxiety, trauma and BPD. Several studies have shown that those with BPD have an enhanced ability to be perceptive and read others emotions, she said.

Still, its the negative side of BPD that gets the most attention on social media. You dont have to poke around Twitter very long to find tweets characterizing Heard and others with BPD as toxic , manipulative or abusive . One YouTube video goes as far as suggesting that because Heard allegedly has BPD, shes not even fit to be a mom . (The Aquaman actor, who finalized her divorce from Depp in 2017 , announced the birth of her daughter last year .)

Purves and others with the condition say its disheartening to see BPD equated with violent behavior.

I definitely worry that BPD will become a phrase that is used to describe violent people, because its just not true, she told HuffPost especially since violence associated with BPD is far more likely to occur in the form of self-harm , not violence against other people.