Feb 01 2009
My “Borderline News”
As a bit of a continuation of the first part of yesterday’s post, I also keep an online eye peeled for stories related to Personality Disorder. I use Google Alerts(tm) to
send me a daily summary of potentially interesting links. Amongst today’s offerings was the headline ”Give people with personality disorder written information on
psychiatric drugs” from the UK Psychmind site for people working in the mental health field.
If one is lucky, there may be some unintelligible pharmaceutical information in the actual box of pills, but that’s about as far as it usually goes, often only serving to increase one’s worries further.
Apart from ”these will help get you through the next few days,” I have never been given any useful information, unprompted, that could in any way help me make an
informed choice about any drug that will interfere with my brain’s reactions.
The guidelines say that Patients should be allowed to discuss the information, so they can make an informed choice about their medication.
Often, when one is either first diagnosed, or a change in medication is indicated, one is hardly in the best frame of mind for making levelheaded, dispassionate decisions. Support is one thing that is vital at these times.
One thing that does not seem to be covered is the actual diagnosis. When I was first described as having Borderline Personality Disorder, the diagnosis was on the back of a sick note. I had not in fact been directly told exactly what was supposed to be wrong with me; tracing the fortnightly-changing description of why I could not work – from anxiety to personality disorder – from my doctor’s description to the Department of Work and Pensions.
When I first read “Borderline Personality Disorder”, I thought that maybe “Borderline” meant “something like”, “on the edge of” or “approximating”, rather than a specific Personality Disorder in its own right. Even the alternate name, Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, would have been more helpful. I thought that I only had half a cause for my problems, that the contents of my head had not been taken seriously and that I was being fobbed off with a non-committal shrug of the shoulders.
This did not help matters and when I next saw my psychiatrist, I made my concerns known; pointing out that, in the absence of any support, at least having some guidance as to what was wrong and the recognition that my problems were being taken seriously was essential for my sense that something was actually being done, rather than being put on the scrap heap.
Ramble over. Have you noticed that Billy’s flat in EastEnders is painted in the same colour scheme as this blog? I noticed it the other day. I am not sure that the comparison is helpful, but never mind.
Hopefully, I will get around to reading NICE’s guidelines – it’s only about 4 years too late for me.
Links:
My ”Borderline News” http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&hl=en&gl=us&ned=us&q=%22personality+disorder%22
Give people with personality disorder written information on psychiatric drugs http://psychminded.co.uk/news/news2009/jan09/personality-disorder007.htm
Association of Therapeutic Communities http://www.therapeuticcommunities.org/index.php
NICE’s clinical guidelines for borderline personality disorder: http://psychminded.co.uk/news/news2009/jan09/border-personality-disorder-nice-guidelines.pdf
