![]() ![]() Individuals learn new techniques to help tolerate distress, to replace catastrophic coping mechanisms such as self-harm, alcohol, drugs and rage. Dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) is a long term programme of individual and group therapies in which the core ideas are acceptance of life as it is, not as it is supposed to be. Illustration: Elin Svenssonīut there is a treatment that, though not widely available, is showing signs of promise. View image in fullscreen The great succour for anyone with BPD is that recovery is the rule, not the exception. “I feel I get treated as if I’m an attention-seeker and they don’t seem to take it seriously.” “I’m 5ft tall, but it took three police officers to restrain me,” she says. Graham was sectioned recently for trespassing on train tracks. The condition is also incredibly challenging for medical services, police and emergency services, resulting in confrontation and mutual distrust. ![]() They might not want to be my friend or date me, which hurts because I’m trying to get better. “I have to keep a secret, because people say don’t be friends with someone with BPD because they are manipulative attention-seekers. I don’t want to be this way,” says Graham. “I’ve hurt a lot of people and I feel terrible about it. It’s hard for friends and family, who can struggle to deal with the rapid ups and downs and mood changes, the fluctuations in confidence and self-image. “The more severe cases come from people who’ve suffered from childhood disorders – physical abuse, sexual abuse or abandonment,” says Jerold Kreisman, an American psychiatrist who has worked with BPD patients for 30 years and authored books such as “ I Hate You Don’t Leave Me.”īut where other mental health conditions are recognised and supported, the very nature of BPD means it can be challenging to help with. I don't want to be this way Louise GrahamĪ recent study by the University of Manchester found that people with BPD were 13 times more likely to report childhood abuse than people without mental illness. But when the police came back, they turned around and said they weren’t going to prosecute.” I've hurt a lot of people and I feel terrible about it. I had gone to the police about being raped and sexually abused. “I was just a kid whose family were all alcoholics and heroin addicts. Mick Finnegan, a 37-year-old Dubliner diagnosed with BPD, also believes the condition was rooted in his childhood. Her later relationships with men, who were often much older, featured physical and emotional abuse Walsh ended up in prison, self-harming, and struggling just to stay alive. She reported the abuse but wasn’t taken seriously until three years later when the perpetrator did the same to other children. Katie Walsh believes that for her everything stemmed from being sexually abused by a family member as a child. Many struggle with addiction, substance abuse, frantic efforts to cope with their suffering.”Įxperts believe the illness stems partly from genetic predisposition (nature) and partly from social and environmental factors (nurture), with a brutal childhood as a particularly common denominator. A lot of patients struggle with self-injury, burning, cutting. “There are very common symptoms, chronic suicide ideation or attempts. “Young adulthood is typically where symptoms may emerge,” she says. Dr Ajeng Puspitasari, a psychologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, says she is treating more patients with BPD than she was two or three years ago. Some doctors believe the number of people with the condition may be increasing. An estimated one in 10 people with BPD take their own lives – and a far larger cohort will try to do so. ![]() Some estimates put prevalence at up to 2% of the population, though most metrics relating to the extent of mental illnesses are approximate. Promiscuity, recklessness, self-sabotage, substance abuse, broken relationships and homelessness are all part of the territory. Those affected can experience dizzying ups and downs, along with paranoia, impulsiveness, obsession, fury, catastrophic black-and-white thinking, identity crisis and an inability to self-soothe. (Some people dislike the term so much they prefer to refer to emotionally unstable personality disorder.) BPD in particular is one of the lesser-known mental illnesses, but all the same it is one of the hardest to reckon with. Illustration: Elin Svenssonīut in the shadows are a cluster of conditions that continue to face deep discrimination: schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder, and BPD. ![]() View image in fullscreen BPD is one of the lesser-known mental illnesses, but one of the hardest to reckon with. ![]()
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