BPD Awareness Week 2024
Written by Lyndon Barei
October 1 - 7 (2024) is BPD Awareness Week.
The theme this year for BPD Awareness Week is Living Life Well: Recovery & BPD.
Borderline Personality Disorder may affect as many as 6% of the population and can be quite debilitating (as well as life-threatening) for those affected. When clients are diagnosed with BPD I encourage evidence-based optimism. Not only do we have a treatment that works, we have three gold-star treatments! So the questions then become: which treatment will work most quickly? which treatment is most accessible?, and which treatment will suit me best?
Treatment Options
The three treatments that demonstrate the best results for BPD are:
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
Schema Therapy, and
Psychodynamic Therapy.
We are fortunate at True North Psychology to have clinicians who work from all three of these modalities, and hence are in a good position to offer people choice in treatment modality and providers. All three of the treatments are considered longer-term (by comparison to treatment of anxiety, depression or single-incident trauma). Expect to commit to at least weekly treatment for a minimum of twelve months (regardless of treatment chosen). Recovery from BPD is, in many regards, like recovery from a physical illness, where response is correlated with dosage.
Marsha Linehan
Marsha Linehan, the treatment-developer of DBT, has a memoir called Building A Life Worth Living. In it she details how she overcame her own struggles with severe mental illness to become a world-renowned psychologist and respected researcher. In her memoir, Linehan details her own path to recovery which started with radical acceptance that she was 'in hell'! (She spent two years of her adolescence in a mental health unit). So Linehan is in a good position to know what skills are needed on the road to recovery.
Measurable Improvement
One of the most joyful parts of my work is reviewing pre-post outcome measure results with clients who complete a program of DBT. The improvements across a range of measures are real-life data supporting recovery in BPD. The big ticket item though is reviewing the diagnostic criteria for BPD after a course of treatment. I've shared many a heartfelt, teary moment with clients when they realise they've overcome their biggest hurdle in life. Which is not to say that life is perfect after treatment. However, there is a ready toolkit to manage the challenges of life. In this way, clients with BPD can go about building their life worth living.
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