Feb 06 2009
“The mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder”
I was gladdened to find the above headline amongst my daily list of Personality Disorder search results. Wondering quite which of the many potential mysteries to which they were referring inspired me to read further. The article is in Time magazine, which is even more encouraging as it brings one of the more extreme mental illnesses into the mainstream. My views on the article are rather mixed; but then they are on most subjects.
The descriptions of BPD, its historical stigma and the view of it as untreatable are then tempered by information on therapies that have been developed to help those affected to some degree of success. Potted biographies of both Marsha Linehan - the developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy and of “Lily”, one of her patients, bring a human and inspiring polish to what is still an uncomfortable subject.
The article is well worth reading, but I do rankle slightly at the closing line, “The key is not defining that uncertain borderline but learning to be happy there” as somewhat defeatist and certainly contrary to my logic. Oh, the stock photo used is rather demeaning and misses the point; nevertheless,the article is a good starting point and so should be welcomed.
Links
“The mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1870491,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
I just noticed that the article is about 4 weeks old, so it is quite possible that everyone else has already read it. If not, then they should.