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Mistakes Costing Lives
Here is an article about medical mistakes costing people their lives. A brief quote from the article about BPD: Six patients committed suicide while in hospital. A near-miss occurred when a patient with borderline personality disorder was placed in seclusion and had to be revived after trying to strangle himself. A nurse was delayed in reaching the patient due to difficulty finding a key to the seclusion room. I don’t know why they’d put a suicidal person with BPD in seclusion. Wow. No related posts.
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Are bloggers and authors about BPD biased?
I don’t usually like to defend myself. In fact, in my book, I have a tool that says “Don’t Defend”. Interestingly, in the Essential Family Guide to BPD, Randi Kreger has the same tool. Yet, I am feeling the need to correct something that Randi has said over at her Psychology Today “Stop Walking on Eggshells” blog. In her new post “Take Some Experts and Bloggers with Agendas With a Grain of Salt” she says: Splitting is not just for people with borderline personality disorder. Some (but not all) people who have expertise with high conflict personalities and borderline personality disorder (BPD) also think in black and white. In my…
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Dr. Marsha Linehan comes out about her own struggles with mental illness
This is a ground-breaking article and admission by Dr. Marsha Linehan, the developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), about her own struggles with mental illness and self-injury. A must read! June 23, 2011 Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight By BENEDICT CAREY HARTFORD — Are you one of us? The patient wanted to know, and her therapist — Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington, creator of a treatment used worldwide for severely suicidal people — had a ready answer. It was the one she always used to cut the question short, whether a patient asked it hopefully, accusingly or knowingly, having glimpsed the macramé of faded…
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Being Right vs Being Effective
In When Hope is Not Enough I have a section in the “getting ready for the tools” chapter that talks about being effective, rather than being right. I’d like to post a large excerpt from that section to illustrate what I want to talk about today. The most important part of this section of the text is the end, after which I will comment on why I’m talking about this today: It is most important to be effective (rather than right all the time) This particular attitude is one that has been the most controversial in my Internet group. Many people in life pride themselves on their morals and ability…
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A Borderline Comes out of the Closet
Here’s an interesting article from a woman diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and her struggles to escape the stigma of the diagnosis. Coming out of the Borderline Personality Disorder Closet (Without Hitting my Head on the Door Jamb) By SONIA NEALE Six years ago I was officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist in a psychiatric hospital as having…drum roll please…BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER. He said it to me in the same way he would announce he had a plague of rats infest his kitchen, discovered I had a sexually transmitted disease or that he had just found out I supported Tea Party candidate Sarah Palin. It was delivered with revulsion, disgust and contempt. Today…
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What Diane Schuler’s story can tell us about emotional honesty and acceptance
You may or may not remember this story from 2009. Diane Schuler, a mother and aunt with her children and her sister’s children in a min-van, goes the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway in Westchester county and plows into an SUV head-on killing three in the SUV and 4 children and herself in the mini-van. Toxicology reports showed she had a blood alcohol level of .19 over twice the legal limit of .08. She also reportedly smoked marijuana and had several ounces of undigested alcohol in her stomach. Here’s an article that analyses the NY Magazine article about her husband Daniel Schuler. This analysis from Jezebel.com, points out the problems,…