borderline personality disorder

The BPD haters

Sadly BPD gets a very bad press. A lot of doctors will refuse to treat someone with BPD. It really is sad. I feel like all of the personality disorders get bad attention. But perhaps, BPD gets it the hardest.

Psychiatrists have failed to provide a treatment approach that works effectively for the BPD sufferer so they blame the patient. Can you imagine an Oncologist behaving in this manner?  Do you think the doctor (specialist) would get angry and frustrated at the cancer patient because they are not cured and dump them? However, this is all too often the experience of the BPD sufferer. I have personally had psychiatrists ignore me and even refuse to speak to me after I have self-harmed. Nurses have refused to work with me simply because they have read my diagnosis in my notes. They have neither met or spoken with me.

This is a quote I found online:-

“Given the absolute potential for devastation that the BPD brings into the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path, it is pretty important to understand the prognosis for their condition.

There is no psychotropic medication that treats BPD and there is no known cognitive therapy that works with them. In short, they have an intractable condition that is impervious to treatment of any kind. They cannot be helped near as much as they can be avoided for the sake of helping others.

There is a running joke among psychiatric professionals about BPD’s. And yes, we told jokes about serious problems. It is one of the ways clinicians deal with the stress of working with them.  Anyway, it’s a simple one-liner.

You don’t treat borderlines, you ignore them.

And that, in the broader sense, is also indirect professional advice when it comes to anyone with the misfortune to find themselves locked in the sights of a BPD.”

by Paul Elam

There is much more drivel that dribbles from this very ill-informed but extremely large mouth but I will not bore you with it. He wrongly claims BPD is a female disease and having met many men with BPD I know he is wrong in this belief. BPD is unfortunately very under diagnosed in men but actually in reality probably no less common but as Paul Elam is obviously using his attack on BPD sufferers to further his career as a leading misogynist his interpretation is understandable.  If you have more than two brain cells to rub together you will steer well clear of the man as I am sure most BPD and non-BPD individuals strive to do. My partner’s response to him was:-

“What an ass-hole. Hope I never have the misfortune to run into him”

But then my partner is a , well-educated  human-being and I am very lucky.

Sadly the reality is that BPD sufferers are far more often the victims of abuse than they are abusers and this kind of ignorance only increases the chance that the BPD sufferer striving to improve their situation will be met with cruelty and hostility.