One in five U.S. adults takes medication for a mental disorder

By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog

9:53 AM PST, November 16, 2011

Medications to treat mental health disorders is soaring among U.S. adults, according to data released Wednesday by Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager.

Twenty percent of all adults said they took at least one medication to treat a mental disorder. Among women, 25% said they took such medication and 20% said they were using an antidepressant.

The survey analyzed prescription drug trends among 2.5 million insured Americans from 2001 to 2010.

Medco researchers also found that adults ages 20 to 44 had the greatest uptick in use of anti-anxiety medications, atypical antipsychotics and drugs to treat ADHD. The number of women on ADHD medications was 2.5 times higher in 2010 than in 2001.

The number of children under 10 taking antipsychotic medication, which is reserved for the most severe mental illnesses, doubled from 2001 to 2010.

There was a stark drop in use of antidepressants among those 19 and under, however. Usage has fallen since a 2004 warning from the Food and Drug Administration that the drugs could increase suicidal thoughts. Prescriptions for anti-anxiety medication among people 65 and older also fell over the last decade.

Reasons behind the growing popularity of medications for mental illness is debatable. Understanding the upswing “is the next critical goal,” Dr. Martha Sanjatovic, a professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said in a statement released by Medco.

Said Dr. David Muzino of the Medco Neuroscience Therapeutic Research Center: “[W]hat is not clear is if more people — especially women — are actually developing psychological disorders that require treatment, or if they are more willing to seek out help and clinicians are better at diagnosing these conditions than they once were.”

But, he noted, it was a tough decade: the 9/11 attacks, two wars and a deep recession.

The report is entitled America’s State of Mind

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2. NIHM Director Thomas Insel considers the name of “Borderline Personality Disorder”
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Emotional Idiot
Maggie Estep

I’m an Emotional Idiot
so get away from me.
I mean,
COME HERE.

Wait, no,
that’s too close,
give me some space
it’s a big country,
there’s plenty of room,
don’t sit so close to me.

Hey, where are you?
I haven’t seen you in days.
Whadya, having an affair?
Who is she?
Come on,
aren’t I enough for you?

God,
You’re so cold.
I never know what you’re thinking.
You’re not very affectionate.

I mean,
you’re clinging to me,
DON’T TOUCH ME,
what am I, your fucking cat?
Don’t rub me like that.

Don’t you have anything better to do
than sit there fawning over me?

Don’t you have any interests?
Hobbies?
Sailing Fly fishing
Archeology?

There’s an archeology expedition leaving tomorrow
why don’t you go?
I’ll loan you the money,
my money is your money.
my life is your life
my soul is yours
without you I’m nothing.

Move in with me
we’ll get a studio apartment together, save on rent,
well, wait, I mean, a one bedroom,
so we don’t get in each other’s hair or anything
or, well,
maybe a two bedroom
I’ll have my own bedroom,
it’s nothing personal
I just need to be alone sometimes,
you do understand,
don’t you?

Hey, why are you acting distant?

Where you goin’,
was it something I said?
What
What did I do?

I’m an emotional idiot
so get away from me
I mean,
MARRY ME.

You can buy Maggie Estep’s “Diary of an Emotional Idiot” below:

Diary of an Emotional Idiot

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1. For my 100th Post – House Passes Bill Making May BPD Awareness Month
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Courtney Love in wake of losing custody of Frances Bean: ‘terrible influences, pure evil’
By Vicki Hyman/The Star-Ledger
December 15, 2009, 10:29AM

Courtney and Frances Bean

Courtney Love has left a string of only occasionally coherent messages on her Facebook page in the wake of a Los Angeles court decision to give temporary custody of Frances Bean Cobain to the girl’s paternal grandmother: “cruelty to children and people too young to understand that under that rock isnt gold its only,.,,,,, utah on steroids” and “terrible influences, pure evil. and a poor baby caught inside a trap”.

That clears things up.

Love’s lawyer tells People that Frances Bean, Love’s daughter with dead rock icon Kurt Cobain, wanted to live with her grandmother, and the judge’s decision should not be taken as confirmation that Love has had a drug relapse.

“Courtney’s been clean for years and is perfectly fine,” Keith A. Fink says. “Frances is 17 and a strong-willed child, and this is a decision she made on her own. No matter what, Courtney loves her daughter more than anything in the world.”

Frances Bean has reportedly always been close with her grandmother, who had custody during a particularly messy period (and that’s saying something) of Love’s life in 2003 and 2004.

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By Amy Yannello

Ink and Paper Horse Sculpture by Mark Williams

Mark Williams—no relation to the local radio talk-show host of the same name—may be the most talented artist you’ve never heard of.

From the biodome-like steel structure in his backyard, to the 4-by-6 mixed-wood xylophone he crafted from scratch, to the two working looms he built and uses in his back bedroom, Williams is one of those artists for whom it seems there is nothing his mind can conceive that he cannot create.

His modest home in north Sacramento is filled with his various art projects, such as meticulously crafted moving carrousels, which, to the naked eye from some distance away, appear to be crafted from plaster or wood, but when viewed close up, are made of paper, pen and ink.

Williams’ various projects have never been displayed for the public, though he’s been asked to do so at various times, he says. The answer as to why goes to the core of Williams’ persona—one that he works daily to overcome.

“They said it was up to them where and how they placed my stuff,” Williams explained. “They didn’t take my input seriously. I didn’t trust them. I said, ‘Forget it.’”

Williams has borderline personality disorder, a mental illness affecting more than 6 million people in the United States, but shrouded in misinformation and is still rarely talked about.

According to Dr. Neil R. Bockian, in his book, New Hope for People With Borderline Personality Disorder, the daily life of a person with BPD can take on all the precariousness of an emotional roller coaster, driven in part by “inaccurate perceptions, misguided thoughts, and shortsighted assumptions about others in their environment.”

But not everyone with BPD has the same symptoms. Williams, for example, has had long-term relationships, where many people with classic BPD do not. Nevertheless, he says his BPD led to an intense mistrust of people and institutions, fueled almost certainly by his mother’s death when he was 2 years old, and his father putting him into an orphanage, where he stayed until he was 18.

“My dad couldn’t keep the family together—I was one of nine—so he sent us away,” Williams said. “I got a great education, but was beaten often and sexually abused and humiliated [in the orphanage].

“As I understand it, there’s a developmental stage around 2, when a child learns to not to depend on the mother and learns to self-soothe, and my developmental stage was disrupted,” he continued. “So that, coupled with the abuse, were the two causations, as I understand it, for the development of my BPD.”

Williams says that early on, his passion for his projects—he doesn’t call the various things he does ‘art’—was based on the need to reach for truth in a hypocritical world.

“I saw people being hypocritical at a very early age—people being beaten in the name of Jesus Christ, that sort of thing,” Williams said. “My dad saying, ‘Pack your things, I’m coming to get you and we’re getting out of here.’ And I didn’t see him again for six years—but I waited for him every Sunday by that front gate.

“But I noticed when I worked with a piece of material, it remembered what I did, it was real. Whatever I thought of and did to it, I could do it. I could see it. I could believe it. It wouldn’t be in a different mood the next day or forget what it said. So I used it as a way to establish my confidence in myself.”

Still, Williams says he has “strong doubts” that other people see or believe his worth—an issue he continues to work on with Dr. Ron Risley, the psychiatrist who Williams credits with helping him establish trust and come out of the shadows.

Risley met Williams six years ago, when Williams was having trouble at a local mental-health agency. He was getting his practical needs met, but was having difficulty connecting to caseworkers. His distrust of the system shot to red-alert status. His life was plagued by panic attacks and other BPD episodes.

When he heard Williams’ story, Risley said he saw a chance to “help another human being.” He began treating Williams for free, seeing him once per week.

“I recognized his need and I did what I could do for him, and he kept showing up, and he got better,” Risley said, “and his incredible abilities started to show up. There’s nothing more gratifying to a doctor than to see his patient get better.”

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Practice and Balance

When I was a child, I went to a fairly fundamentalist church. We had this Christian tract that showed man on one side and God on the other, with “clouds of sin” in between, obscuring man’s view of God. Repentance and faith in Jesus would “clear the air.” There was another one, with which you are probably familiar if you’ve ever been exposed to these things, where man is on one side and God is on the other and there is a big gulf of sin in between. The cross ends up being the bridge that allows man over the gulf.

Now that I am a grownup I lean more toward skillfulness than faith. However, the idea of “clouds” obscuring a “true view” of reality still appeals to me. These clouds are not sin now, they are ineffective cognitions, whether cognitive distortions or negative emotions. I see the interaction between two people as a dance or a piece of music in which each plays a part. Training, practice and conditioning all come into play when one is preparing to dance. If a dancer over-thinks, she is sure to fall on her rear or step on her partner’s toes. If one’s mind is engaged in cognitive distortions or negative emotions, one can’t dance properly.

Years ago, I read “Zen and the Art of Archery.” In the book, the author has to develop a certain mind-set to hit the target. Much of this mind-set involves getting out of one’s own mental way and practicing the skill until it becomes second-nature. Whether it is archery or dance or interpersonal relationships, I find that much of the time, most people get in their own way and end up a tangle of resentments, anger and emotional pain. There are too many automatic thoughts and learned emotional responses that cloud a person’s ability to perform effectively in a relationship.

My suggestion to counteract this is for people to:

1. Clear the mind of cognitive distortions and negative emotions
2. Don’t assume another person’s motivation
3. Practice effective skills to the point of complete mastery
4. Relax, take a breath, slow down

You can purchase “Zen and the Art of Archery” here:

Zen in the Art of Archery

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David Oliver and BPD Support

Dear Friend,
If you have a loved one with borderline personality disorder, then this is going to be the most important letter that you have ever read.

Hi, my name is David Oliver. In a few minutes I am about to tell you how I discovered the 10 secrets to helping and supporting a loved one with borderline personality disorder.
10 key secrets that NOBODY else will tell you.

…and is of course ridiculously long and repetitious, imploring you to sign up today for a FREE gift of this newsletter (or whatever). So, I got interested in this David Oliver guy. I did a “whois” on him and found out the site is run by a company called “The Leverage Team, LLC.” Off to Google to find out what the deal is (of course Google knows – haha). It turns out that this “supporter of BPD” is a multi-level marketer. I found this profile of him:

David Oliver is the president of The Leverage Team, LLC. and has over nine years of combined experience specializing in network, multilevel, and referral marketing. Mr. Oliver has written several books, including “The Ultimate Home Business,” which details the benefits of multilevel and network marketing, and “Get Rich Quick Schemes Finally Exposed.” Mr. Oliver graduated from Yale University, with honors, with a degree in Sociology with a concentration in Economics and completed his senior thesis titled: “Visionary Capitalism: A Study of the Network Marketing Phenomenon.” Mr. Oliver is familiar with multilevel marketing companies including: Herbalife, Mary Kay, PartyLite (Blyth), NuSkin, Amway, Arbonne, Pampered Chef, Quixtar, XanGo, Pre-paid Legal, Eniva, USANA, Shaklee, FreeLife, Isagenix, and NewWays and many startup companies. Mr. Oliver sells up to $28,571.42 a month of products, putting him in the top .5% of the multilevel and network marketing industry.

He just makes all the real people, who are honestly trying to help non-borderlines, appear like scam artists and marketing a-holes.

It turns out he also runs a bipolar support board and has posted many articles about bipolar support. To me, he just looks like another guy trying to rich with Google.

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1. Why Hope is Not Enough
2. Holy Cow! An Amazon Review for When Hope is Not Enough
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Misinformation

“So, you sacrificed your children to a crazy person?? What is wrong with you?? Is there a clinical term for “glutton for punishment”?” Dissolve this toxic relationship immediately!

Judgmental. Non-BPs don’t need another person telling them to leave their partner; there are hundreds of people for that. This commenter is a “top contributor” too with 2,424 answers to questions thus far. I wonder how many wrong/inaccurate questions she’s answered. I guess some of her answers (like those in “Cooking and Recipes”) can’t hurt too many people (unless they poison themselves with bad brownies).

“Your Co-dependency is off the rictor scale when you place your partner ahead of your SONs safety…This is NOT about your partner.. This is about the health welfare and safety of your son… This is an abusive house hold!!!! GET OUT OF THERE IMMEDIATELY!!!”

Judgmental. Another voice saying “get out!” And the use of co-dependency, love it. I wonder if the woman asked the question, “My partner has cancer… is there anyway to help him?” What would be the answer then?

“You really should get yourself and kids out of that situation .Do it for the kids.”

Same.

“I hate to tell you this, but he’s not going to change. Personality disorders are incurable and they only end when the person with them dies.”

Oh yeah? Well, when did you get this information? 1980? The APA is considering taking the word “personality” out of BPD (and borderline for that matter). Look into the research before you hand out advice. DBT, SFT and Mentalization-based therapies all show promise in reducing the behaviors and feelings below the 5 of 9 threshold mark for diagnosable BPD. It is not incurable.

“you might want to get a little therapy yourself, bpd can really mess with your head sometimes… but then i am with my own mental problems. so take that with a grain of salt.”

Not bad advice.

“PLEASE SPEAK TO A THERAPIST ABOUT A BOARDRLINE AND WHETHER THEY CAN BE HELPED. imo and therapists I have spoken to the answer is no. Treatments (the VAST majority of the time) don’t work. Please don’t take my word for it, ask for yourself.”

Speaking to a therapist is not bad advice… but that the answer is they cannot be cured… that’s incorrect. BPD can be managed and all people in the support system can help. If this person had bipolar I – would you all tell her to “run away?”

“You’re [sic] “kind and loving husband” never existed. That was nothing more than a mask. Oh, you moved out? Then stay out.”

OK, leave him again… I think we got it. It’s amazing how angry people are with borderlines.

“Personality disorders CANNOT, repeat cannot, be cured. They are inflexible, self-sustained, and have a 99% chance of being incurable. Your gut instinct, and the FACTUAL evidence you’ve read on the internet, are guiding you in the right direction.”

Again, wrong… see above. “Factual evidence…” on the Internet is a laugh. The Internet is filled with angry (usually ex-) Non-BPs that are ready to tell the story of how impossible, abusive and awful their ex BPD partner was. I’m not going to argue that people with BPD can’t be abusive or rage at you – they can. However, if you see the problem for what it really is… it is more manageable than many other disorders. Educate yourself about it. Find out the facts. Learn skills. Or leave… it’s up to you.

“Personality disorders are pretty much the only mental problem that CAN be cured. It takes a long time and a good counselor. Personality disorders are not a biological disorder like the more commonly known mental illnesses. Personality disorders are conditioned behavior over a lifetime.”

Well, this is almost true. The behavior component is conditioned behavior and can be “retrained” out of someone. The emotional dysregulation and impulsiveness components are probably biological.

“You sound like a weak person. You would sacrifice your sons well being to have someone.”

Judgmental.

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Celebrities’ bad behavior is rooted in mental illness, according to “Dr. Drew” Pinsky, who is best known as the host of Celebrity Rehab and Loveline — a nationally syndicated radio show that invites listeners to call in with questions about sex and drugs.

In his latest book, The Mirror Effect (on bookstore shelves Tuesday), he spells out a theory that stars are predisposed to narcissistic personality disorder long before they become famous. Their dysfunctional behavior is rewarded by Hollywood and portrayed as normal by the press.

“As reporting on celebrity behavior becomes even more ruthless and mean-spirited, I am struck by this disconnect between how a
celebrity’s behavior is portrayed in the media, and the very real problems that underlie their actions,” wrote Pinsky.

He argues that the media fails to acknowledge that celebrities are mentally ill when holding them up as role models, so everyday people have begun to emulate their unhealthy behavior.

In 2006, Pinsky and his co-author Mark Young published the first systematic study of celebrity psychology in the Journal of Research in Personality. The new book explains that research and how it fits into the larger context of our culture, which they argue has been soiled by shameless producers, agents and paparazzi.

The first three chapters read like a history textbook, recapping famous celebrity mishaps and an era when those unfortunate episodes were carefully hidden from the public. It gives readers a glimpse of just how conservative Pinsky really is. He seems to prefer the  good old days when movie studios were able to keep Rock Hudson in the closet.

The celebrity doctor is not a fan of MySpace or Facebook either, because they allow people to seek attention by acting out like celebrities — posting provocative pictures and personal stories about irresponsible behavior.

“Without appropriate monitoring, these social networking platforms are subject to abuse by those who are most vulnerable to the endless feedback loop they create,” wrote Pinsky. “This is known as an urge/compulsion/reinforcement cycle, and it’s very similar to what happens to those who crave drugs or other addictive substances.”

After that rather stiff introduction, the book becomes a psychology lesson with celebrities as examples.

Pinsky seems fond of interpreting behavior in the light of evolution, and gave this explanation for the asinine stunts performed by Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O on the show Jackass.

“Some have speculated that such acting out may be deeply rooted in our genes, as a way to display genetic prowess and adaptability,” wrote Pinsky. “In this theory, males (in particular) who survive dangerous stunts are displaying their biological capacity to survive in adversity.”

In their 2006 study, Pinsky and Young found that celebrities from reality television score the highest on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Pinsky is convinced that the producers of those shows carefully select contestants with psychological problems, because they will bring extra drama to each show.

“Having served as a consultant to several reality shows, I know what the producers are looking for in contestants,” wrote Pinsky. “The standards regarding mental health are extremely fluid.”

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At the same time, I have a problem with this book. While it is MUCH better than “Stop Walking on Eggshells” (SWOE), her previous book about NON-BPs, I agree with her prescription about 40%. Her sections on “Communicating to be heard” and “Reinforcing right behavior” are agreeable, the rest is NOT agreeable to me. I will soon offer a true book review of this new book; however, I believe (humbly) that my book WHINE is a MUCH better book for understanding and dealing with a person with BPD than either SWOE or “The Essential Guide…” by Randi. While I know where she is coming from, she misses an essential thing about BPD – that thing is IAAHF (“it’s all about his/her feelings”), a concept in WHINE. She still seems to think that you can make it (at first) about YOUR feelings, which, with BPD, is impossible at first. This is both my opinion and the opinions of the members of my group. I am a bit miffed that  SWOE sold something like 300,00 copies and WHINE 300, because I think (as do my almost 400) group members that WHINE is a MUCH better book to understand the BPD/NON-BPD dynamic than either SWOE or “The Essential Family Guide…”

I know that Randi will see this via her Google alerts and I welcome her comments. I have no argument or disagreement with Randi. I respect her and feel she is contributing to the community the best she can. At that same time, I feel her publishing efforts fall short of what is effective in the NON-BP area.

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The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Jonah Lehrer

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WktborljI_o

The actual scene starts at 5:35 and be careful there are some pretty graphic things before the 5:35 mark. The scene involves Carroll’s (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) mother not giving him money for drugs. Carroll is a heroin addict at the time. It’s worth seeing just to see tough love in action. If you watch you will see that the tough love is tough on both of them and, more importantly, the mother chooses to use her boundary (“I will not give my son money for drugs”), rather than try and control HIS behavior, which many people think boundaries and tough love are all about.

Anyway, I started looking into Carroll on wikipedia and stumbled across this picture of Carroll taken last year (ok, he’s only 57 in the photo).

Here is another photo taken of him in 2000 (when he was 50).

I mean, Jeez, what happened to him? Some have speculated heroin again, but it looks like meth or AIDS to me. Here’s a blog post about Carroll’s reading from last year. It’s just so sad.

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• Self
• Spouse
• Non-Spouse Partner
• Child
• Parent
• Sibling or Other Relation
• Friend
• Ex-Partner or Ex-Spouse

I got 141 votes from 102 voters (you could choose more than one relationship if you had more than one). I have now closed that poll and wanted to present the results. I have two graphs that represent the results of that poll. One is a straight results graph:

Which shows that the spouse category is the largest at about 22%. However, in the next graph I combined spouse, non-spouse partner and ex-partner (or spouse) and found the following:

With 42.55% showing that the relationship is with a spouse/partner/ex. This could be explained by the fact that many children are not given the diagnosis until later in life (supposedly BPD is only diagnosiable at 18 years of age and more) and as the Time article notedthe “prime time” for BPD is in ones 20′s.

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Tranquilizer Detox Withdrawal Can Last Years

FDA, Patients Say Quitting ‘Benzos’ Abruptly Can Lead to Horrific Side Effects

By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit

Dec. 1, 2008—

Americans take a lot of “benzos,” even if they don’t know exactly what “benzos” are.

In 2007, U.S. doctors wrote more than 82 million prescriptions for a type of tranquilizer called benzodiazepines, often called “benzos,” which includes Valium, Ativan, Xanax and Klonopin.

The positive effects of benzos are widely discussed in blogs, and in the media. But the much appreciated “mother’s little helper” drugs can have dangerous side effects that last for years. Some of the worst problems actually start once someone tries to stop taking them.

Negative symptoms began “probably the day after I stopped taking it [clonazepam] completely,” said Colin Moran, 41, co-founder of benzobuddies.org, an emotional support site with practical advice to help people safely stop taking benzodiazepines.

“I woke up and I thought I had a stroke,” he said. “My scalp, down the middle of my body — everywhere on the left was numb, and I could barely move on that side of the body.

“Even though I thought I had a stroke, I was in such a confused state that I didn’t even feel inclined to do anything about it,” said Moran.

Moran had taken clonazepam (a benzodiazepine often called Rivotril or Klonopin) for nearly two years before deciding to take a break. He even tried to “safely” taper off the dose over six weeks.

Finally, a friend forced him to call a neurologist, who informed him that he had not had a stroke but that he was experiencing withdrawal from the clonazepam.

The numbness was only the beginning. Moran later experienced nightmares, anxiety, night sweats and a bewildering mental fog.

Moran said he had never had such symptoms before he was prescribed clonazepam for a seizure problem, called brainstem myoclonus, which was characterized by spontaneous jerks in the body, trunk and limbs.

“Now I had to keep on this small dose, just so I could move,” he said.

Eventually Moran would join a minority of people who suffer from protracted withdrawal syndrome after stopping benzodiazepines.

“The two most dangerous drugs to detox off of are benzos and alcohol,” said Dr. Harris Stratyner, vice chairman of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

“A lot of insurance companies want you in the hospital if you’re coming off of alcohol or benzos,” said Stratyner, who is also a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, and vice president of the Caron Treatment Center in New York.

Withdrawal Can Strike At Random

Not only do benzos create a physical addiction, Stratyner said the drugs can alter how the brain processes neurotransmitters that calm a person down.

In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends short-term use of benzodiazepines for that very reason, warning that quitting benzodiazepines abruptly can result in more than 40 withdrawal side effects, including headache, anxiety, tension, depression, insomnia, confusion, dizziness, derealization and short-term memory loss.

However, for Moran, side effects of benzos extended to the time he was taking the drugs, as well.

Since clonazepam was the only drug available to treat his condition, Moran tried for years to take the drug, then to taper off for three months before he built up too much of a tolerance, and then to start again.

“I was a complete mess on benzos — confused, irrational and unemotional,” he said.

Two years after he started the new drugs, Moran decided to end his six-year romantic relationship.

“It just felt wrong. When I told her it was over, she told me that the medication had changed me,” said Moran. “I thought it was just a reaction to the breakup.”

But six weeks after his last dose, Moran said a he felt a flood of feelings he hadn’t felt in years.

“I think it was just normal emotions, but it had been years since I experienced them and so, I wasn’t used to coping with them,” he said.

Moran said he then realized his ex-girlfriend was right.

“I tried to repair the damage I had done to my personal life, but it was way too late,” he said.

To this day, Moran walks with a limp on his left side. He said he sees himself as an extreme case of common withdrawal symptoms.

Stratyner said 10 percent of people who quit abruptly may experience a “syndrome” of withdrawal symptoms that extend long after the drugs leave their bodies. This change can reverse, but for a small proportion of people, it can take months or years to recover.

“If you suddenly stop taking Klonopin (clonazepam) rapidly, you usually get cramping, you can have convulsions, you can have auditory hallucinations, nightmares,” said Stratytner. “It’s not unusual at all.”

But no one told that to Geraldine Burns, 53, the first time she decided to stop taking a benzo called Ativan (lorazepam).

“I never had a panic attack before I stopped taking Ativan,” said Burns, who remembers she was driving down a busy artery in Boston with her infant daughter and young son in the back seat when she suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“It was like you’re just coming out of your skin,” she said.

A psychiatrist prescribed Ativan for Burns at age 33, shortly after she gave birth to her daughter. She said she felt physically off at the time, like she weighed 1,000 pounds, but that her doctors thought it was a post-partum depression.

“I was handed Ativan in the hospital and told to go see a psychiatrist,” she said.

A year later, after receiving a prescription for Ativan, Burns said she still felt off.

“Then I read an article about how women could feel just how I felt, and it was an infection of the womb, and you don’t necessarily have to have a fever,” she said.

Burns said she called another doctor — an internist — about the article and he prescribed her antibiotics. Within five days of taking the antibiotics, Burns said she felt much better.

“So I stopped taking Ativan,” said Burns. “I didn’t know that you couldn’t just stop.”

The Danger of Going Cold Turkey

After the first panic attacks, Burns called her psychiatrist who, according to Burns, told her she shouldn’t have stopped the pills and that she needed to take Ativan “for the rest of my life.”

Burns continued to take Ativan and antidepressants for nine years; meanwhile, her anxiety and agoraphobia only increased. During that time, her body developed a tolerance for the drug, making coming off of it all the more risky.

Then, one day, at age 42, Burns went to a new gynecologist who informed her that benzodiazepines were extremely addictive. Burns decided to try and stop, then sue her psychiatrist.

“I was OK for about six months, and then I went into protracted withdrawal,” she said.

Burns experienced ringing in her ears, twitching on her face and hallucinations that bugs were crawling all over her scalp.

Ten years later, many of her symptoms have calmed down. But Burns decided she would spend her time helping others through benzosupport.org and Benzobookreview.com.

Cindy, who asked ABCNews.com not to use her last name, found help through Burns and her Web site last year. Like many people with benzo withdrawal symptoms, Cindy said the only sign that she wasn’t crazy were others on the Internet with similar symptoms.

“Three years ago, I was a very, very healthy 49-year-old,” said Cindy, of Rhode Island. “I never had a psychiatric history; I never was on any psychiatric drugs. Never on any drugs, really.”

Cindy’s gynecologist first prescribed her Valium after she hit a bout of insomnia with menopause. It worked, but eight months later, she began to feel depressed and have rashes. Cindy said her doctor told her she could quit taking the drug if she liked, so she did.

Three weeks later, Cindy said she couldn’t stand or walk without holding on to a wall, and she had inexplicable feelings of physical fear. Eventually, her two college-aged children found her unresponsive on the floor. They wrapped her up in a blanket and took her back to the gynecologist.

“I said, ‘I need to go to the hospital,’” said Cindy. “She told me to go home.”

Cindy said she has recovered slightly but is still so disoriented that she has trouble reading and writing. Eventually, she had to quit her job as a social worker.

“It took four months. I literally lost my mind,” she said.

Withdrawal Can Lead to ‘Derealization’

In addition to the fear, Cindy said she went through a “depersonalization,” where people and objects appeared unreal and untrustworthy to her, as if she was in a dream world.

“Nothing was right,” she said.

Now, Cindy said, she mistrusts doctors, and will absolutely refuse to take another drug again. Instead, she relies on emotional support from Burns while her body slowly recovers.

Burns and Moran admit their online support groups have stirred mild controversy with people’s doctors for the medical advice about tapering doses of drugs. However, they said all agree their sites can provide initial emotional support to people struggling with withdrawal.

“Don’t let the horror stories get to you,” said Burns. “We’ve got lots of people who get better.”

Alison Kellagher is one such person. She took benzodiazepines for 17 years, originally just to treat a couple of panic attacks she had in a new job.

“I went to a psychiatrist and he just immediately prescribed a Xanax, and it was to take every day,” said Kellagher. “It helped for a number of years, but as the dose got higher, the side effect of depression became stronger.”

Kellagher eventually decided to stop, and even went to a detox program to help her slowly taper off the drugs. Yet, the years had taken their toll and she experienced withdrawal.

“Then, I was in a profoundly alerted consciousness, immediately after stopping,” said Kellagher. “It was the feeling of being in terror, but it was just a physiological state of terror.”

Kellagher said she thinks she’s lucky because it only lasted several months.

“The first three months was 24-7. Then, it started to let up a little bit by three to six months. By a year, I was pretty comfortable,” she said. “I wasn’t 100 percent, but I was functioning and feeling almost normal.”

The experience motivated Kellagher, who worked in the bicycle clothing industry, to get a master’s degree for counseling. Now, she coaches people through protracted benzodiazepine withdrawal over the phone.

“People usually need some help keeping hope alive,” said Kellagher, who runs the site stoppingbenzos.com. “It’s hard not to get bogged down in depression, because it’s a long process.”

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Fla. teen commits suicide with live Web audience

By RASHA MADKOUR – 1 day ago

MIAMI (AP) — A college student committed suicide by taking a drug overdose in front of a live webcam as some computer users egged him on, others tried to talk him out of it, and another messaged OMG in horror when it became clear it was no joke. Some watchers contacted the Web site to notify police, but by the time officers entered Abraham Biggs’ home — a scene also captured on the Internet — it was too late.

Biggs, a 19-year-old Broward College student who suffered from what his family said was bipolar disorder, or manic depression, lay dead on his bed in his father’s Pembroke Pines house Wednesday afternoon, the camera still running 12 hours after Biggs announced his intentions online around 3 a.m.

It was unclear how many people watched it unfold.

Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama — and the reaction of those watching — was seen as an extreme example of young people’s penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet.

Biggs’ family was infuriated that no one acted sooner to save him, neither the viewers nor the Web site that hosted the live video, Justin.tv. The Web site shows a video image, with a space alongside where computer users can instantly post comments.

Only when police arrived did the Web feed stop, “so that’s 12 hours of watching,” said the victim’s sister, Rosalind Bigg. “They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours.”

She added: “It didn’t have to be.”

An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which his family said was prescribed for his bipolar disorder.

Biggs announced his plans to kill himself over a Web site for bodybuilders, authorities said. But some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before.

Some members of his virtual audience encouraged him to do it, others tried to talk him out of it, and some discussed whether he was taking a dose big enough to kill himself, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner’s office.

A computer user who claimed to have watched said that after swallowing some pills, Biggs went to sleep and appeared to be breathing for a few hours while others cracked jokes.

Someone notified the moderator of the bodybuilding site, who traced Biggs’ location and called police, Crane said.

As police entered the room, the audience’s reaction was filled with Internet shorthand: “OMFG,” one wrote, meaning “Oh, my God.” Others, either not knowing what they were seeing, or not caring, wrote “lol,” which means “laughing out loud,” and “hahahah.”

An online video purportedly from Biggs’ webcam shows a gun-wielding officer entering a bedroom, where a man is lying on a bed, his face turned away from the camera. The officer begins to examine him, as the camera lens is covered. Authorities could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video, though it matched their description of what occurred.

Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said Biggs’ very public suicide was not shocking, given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

“If it’s not recorded or documented then it doesn’t even seem worthwhile,” she said. “For today’s generation it might seem, `What’s the point of doing it if everyone isn’t going to see it?’”

She likened Biggs’ death to other public ways of committing suicide, like jumping off a bridge.

Crane said she knows of a case in which a Florida man shot himself in the head in front of an online audience, though she didn’t know how much viewers saw. In Britain last year, a man hanged himself while chatting online.

In a statement, Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel said: “We regret that this has occurred and want to respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time.”

The Web site would not say how many people were watching the broadcast. The site as a whole had 672,000 unique visitors in October, according to Nielsen.

Miami lawyer William Hill said there is probably nothing that could be done legally to those who watched and did not act. As for whether the Web site could be held liable, Hill said there doesn’t seem to be much of a case for negligence.

“There could conceivably be some liability if they knew this was happening and they had some ability to intervene and didn’t take action,” said Hill, who does business litigation and has represented a number of Internet-based clients. But “I think it would be a stretch.”

Condolences poured into Biggs’ MySpace page, where the mostly unsmiling teen is seen posing in a series of pictures with various young women. On the bodybuilding Web site, Biggs used the screen name CandyJunkie. His Justin.tv alias was “feels_like_ecstacy.”

Rosalind Bigg described her brother as an outgoing person who struck up conversations with Starbucks baristas and enjoyed taking his young nieces to Chuck E. Cheese. He was health-conscious and exercised but was not a bodybuilder, she said.

“This is very, very sudden and unexpected for us,” the sister said. “It boggles the mind. We don’t understand.”

___

Associated Press Writers Jessica Gresko and Lisa Orkin Emmanuel and the AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS sister’s last name in next-to-last graf.)

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Ventura murder trial opens

By Raul Hernandez
Originally published 12:01 a.m., November 20, 2008
Updated 01:00 p.m., November 19, 2008

A Ventura woman tried break free from her killer’s grip but was stabbed more than 130 times in a deadly attack, a prosecutor told a jury today in the murder trial of 24-year-old Uriel Cruz.

Prosecutor Rebecca Day told jurors that the 2007 death of Barbarita Yvonne Luna, 25, was premeditated murder and that her alleged killer, Cruz, had been lying in wait.

“She was using her hands to push him away, but she couldn’t get out of his grasp,” Day said in her opening statement to the Ventura County Superior Court jury.

The prosecutor said Cruz and Luna were romantically involved until she broke off their relationship, and she refused his numerous requests to get back together.

Cruz is accused of stabbing Luna to death in a car in the parking lot of the Target store on Main Street in Ventura on May 11, 2007. Authorities say he drove away and was arrested later the same day by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Calabasas after his relatives urged him to turn himself in.

Today, the jury saw photographs taken by Los Angeles County deputies. One showed Cruz standing next to his car with blood on his clothes and face. Other photos showed the victim’s lifeless and bloody body, slumped in the passenger side of the car.

Cruz’s lawyer, Josie Banuelos of the county Public Defender’s Office, said he never intended to kill Luna.

In her opening statement to the jury, Banuelos said Cruz has a borderline personality disorder and a history of cutting himself to relieve his mental pain. Banuelos said he bought the knife to mutilate himself and had no intention of killing Luna.

“That knife was for him because he was going to go see Ms. Luna. He was afraid he might be hearing something he didn’t want to hear, and he could cut himself to relieve the pain,” Banuelos said.

She said every interview Cruz had with detectives indicates that he told them: “I didn’t intend to kill her. Why would I kill the woman I love?”

Day pointed out to jurors that Cruz isn’t using the insanity defense in his trial.

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Beware catching this from your spouse

• Story Highlights
• Studies: Emotional contagion in marriage can harm spouse with bad moods
• Wives more likely to get hardening of arteries from hostile fights with husband
• If your husband is in nasty mood, go for a walk and recognize it’s his mood
• In happy marriage, one spouse’s optimism can rub off on partner

By Kathyrn Matthews

(OPRAH.com) — For better or for worse, when you get married, you sign on for a life of sharing –bedsheets, bathroom space, cold germs. Moods, too, as it turns out. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that “emotional contagion,” the unconscious tendency to mimic the emotions of others, affects spousal health.

Heart bypass patients with neurotic and anxious spouses, for instance, were much more likely to be depressed 18 months after surgery — independent of their own personality — according to one study led by John M. Ruiz, Ph.D., assistant professor of clinical psychology at Washington State University.

The findings are troubling because depression is known to put recovering cardiac patients at higher risk of further heart attacks and death.

Another study showed that hardening of the coronary arteries was more likely in wives when they — or their husbands — expressed hostility during fights.

As for how one catches a partner’s foul humor, the brain’s aptly named “mirror neurons” are to blame, says John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago and co-author of “Emotional Contagion.”

These neurons fire in response to other people’s actions and intentions, especially when you care about the individual. So if you see that your husband is anxious or depressed, you literally feel his pain. There are, however, a few ways to prevent spousal mood infection. Oprah.com: What’s really going on in his head!

Disengage

When he makes a nasty remark and you give it right back, you’re off to the races. You can avoid getting stuck in this loop by planning how you will respond to his negativity. One option is to walk away: Take a stroll around the block, go for a bike ride. Once you’re on your own, you can see how much your partner’s mood is really affecting you. If it’s substantial, you might schedule more alone time in your relationship.

Or ask him to exercise with you or visit a therapist (see “Play as a Team”) to try to improve his mood. If you’re the problem, leaving the premises when you feel a funk coming on is also a good way to keep him — and the marriage — healthy.

Let him see the light

His doldrums could be a symptom of seasonal affective disorder — yours too. If either of you is worse in the winter, cheerier when it’s sunny, try installing bright full-spectrum lighting.

Play as a Team

Demanding that he go to a shrink is often not an effective way to motivate him to get help, Cacioppo says. Suggesting that you see a couples therapist together may prove more successful.

Keep your spirits up

People who are content in their relationships are much less vulnerable to a spouse’s neuroticism, according to Ruiz’s research. On the flip side, in a happy marriage, one partner’s optimism may rub off on the other — an actual health benefit. Did someone say optimism? The good news is, you can catch that too.

By Kathyrn Matthews from “O, The Oprah Magazine” © 2008

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Ignored Psych Patient Dies on Hospital Floor

Video Shows Death in NYC Hospital Already Faces a Lawsuit for ‘Squalid’ Psych Care

By DAVID SCHOETZ

July 1, 2008—

Even pared down to a few minutes, the hour-long surveillance video is disturbing.

At 5:32 a.m. June 19, a woman in a hospital gown in the waiting area of the psychiatric emergency room of a New York City hospital topples first to her knees before collapsing on her face.

A full hour passes. Other people stream in and out of the waiting room, including hospital security guards. The woman writes something on the ground before going completely still. Finally, someone takes notice and alerts the staff. But by then, at 6:36 a.m., the woman is already dead.

The woman, 49-year-old Esmin Green, died on the floor of the waiting room at the Kings County Hospital Center Psychiatric Emergency Department. Her exact cause of death has not been released.

The native of Jamaica, who had been waiting for a bed when she collapsed, had been involuntarily admitted the previous day for “agitation and psychosis,” according to the City Health and Hospital Corp., which acknowledged June 20 that Green had been left unattended on the ground for an hour.

Alan Aviles, the president of the Health and Hospital Corp., had already announced that six hospital employees, including staff members who oversee patient care and security, face disciplinary action for their lack of response. Two of the employees were fired, while four unionized staff members must go through termination proceedings.

The hospital, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, may have a much bigger problem on its hands. In May, Kings County Hospital was targeted in a federal lawsuit by three organizations that described hospital conditions as “inhumane.” Attorneys for the plaintiff released the footage of Green’s death Monday night to illustrate in brutal detail some of the allegations made in the suit.

The Mental Hygiene Legal Service, New York Civil Liberties Union and Kirland & Ellis LLP filed the lawsuit after an investigation at the hospital “showed that Kings County psychiatric facilities are overcrowded and often dangerously unsanitary and that patients — including children and the physically disabled — are routinely ignored and abused,” according to the groups’ May 3 release announcing the suit.

The groups claim that alleged mistreatment of patients at the hospital is a violation of the federal Americans With Disabilities Act as well as several New York State provisions that guarantee the delivery of mental health services in a safe and sanitary manner.

Aviles is named as one of the lead defendants in the 36-page suit, which specifically cites five patients, all with some type of disability, who allege “abusive and neglectful” treatment at Kings County.

One patient, L.D., claimed that she was laughed at when she asked to call her family and was placed in a bed with soiled sheets. Another patient, identified as J.P., said that she had to sleep sitting up in a wheelchair after she got up in the night to use the bathroom and returned to find another patient in her bed.

The New York Daily News reported that in addition to the neglect in Green’s case, staff members entered false information into her medical chart during the hour in which she lay on the ground to cover up the lack of treatment.

At 6 a.m. on the morning of her death, according to the Daily News, Green’s medical chart reportedly listed the patient as “awake, up and about, went to the bathroom.” Green had been in the same spot on the ground for more than a half-hour. At 6:08 a.m., she stopped moving, according to the footage. But her chart described her at 6:20 a.m. as “sitting quietly in the waiting room.” In reality, she may have already been dead.

Ana Marengo, a spokeswoman for the Health and Hospital Corp., would not address the exact entries in Green’s medical chart, but did say, “There appears to be some discrepancies” that have been forwarded, along with the entire case, to various New York City investigative departments.

“It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care,” administrators wrote in a statement last night that followed the video’s release.

Hospital administrators outlined a series of improvements already made to the Kings County psychiatric program, including the addition of staff and expanding space to cope with overcrowding. They pledged a series of improvements, including the appointment of an “interim administrator” who will report directly to Aviles, and a guarantee that patients in the psychiatric emergency unit will be checked on every 15 minutes.

In June, USA Today reported that nearly 80 percent of hospitals said that mentally ill patients sometimes wait up to four hours or more for emergency care, citing a study by the American College of Emergency Physicians that surveyed 328 emergency medical directors.

Physicians blamed the delayed care on shrinking budgets that have prompted many hospitals to either consolidate mental health services or shut them down completely. Since 2000, the number of psychiatric beds has dropped 12 percent, according to the medical organization’s statistics.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

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• borderline tough love (it doesn’t work see this post)
• bpd not wrong (I wonder a BP saying they’re not wrong or a non-bp complaining about it?)
• bpd impacts on loved ones (big ones! That’s the whole point of the site huh?)
• how to stop ruminating (It isn’t easy. Mindfulness helps.)
• dumped out of the blue bpd (yeah, it happens)
• how to stop a demonic possession (I’m amazed at the number of demonic possession believers out there)
• here is the last two digits of my social (ok, where is the rest? – haha)
• bpd inability to love (sad…)
• bpd look of hate evil (I’ve seen it.)
• outlandish lies (poor guy/gal)
• best site anythingtostopthepain (my favorite of the group)
• cocaine and bpd (not a good combo)
• bpd wife bitch (bitter much?)
• shall i contact my ex who has bpd (not if you don’t have to)
• how do i validate my borderline daughter (nice… I’m glad you’re trying!)
• “borderline personality” evil (evil again)
• drunk housewives (is this someone looking for porn? or support? Maybe a new ABC show?)
• bpd are evil (evil again!)
• how do you stop a demonic possession (you can’t – it doesn’t exist. I guess you can stop believing in it.)

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Obviously, there are many, many new people who have no idea who I am or what I’m about. There are a few members still hanging around who do remember me. There are a couple of people who seem to have a pretty dim view of what I have to offer – although I think that those people don’t know me very well and have interacted with me only cursorily. First, today, I’d like to outline my philosophy about BPD and Non-BPs to clear up some of the mis-statements and mis-perceptions.

• I do believe that BPD is a serious mental illness and not a case of a “behavioral disorder.” In other words, BPD is not merely a case of someone just behaving badly. I further believe that much of the core issue with someone with BPD is emotional and based on poor emotional regulation skills. The reaction to strong negative emotions (and other factors, like  shame and impulsiveness) cause the “poor behavior.” I put that in quotes because the behavior has a function and the function IMO is to make the BP feel better. A person (whether they have BP or not) CAN learn to behave differently in the face of strong negative emotions. It takes practice and requires the acquisition of emotional skills. However, I also believe that the emotional under-pinnings are not going to disappear, just because the person with BPD learns to behave more effectively. Emotionally, they are just more sensitive than other people – that is the way they are. In other words, I don’t believe that I have a “cure” for BPD, which was bandied about at WTO.
• I also believe that the only person that you can change in a relationship is yourself. It is my opinion that once you change your own approach to emotional situations, the person with whom you are having the relationship will react to the change in various ways. Sometimes they will have a fit. Sometimes they will appreciate the “new you.” And sometimes a complex combination of emotions will arise. My “methods” are a combination of emotional understanding (of your own emotions and of theirs), emotional validation (which is complex in itself), positive reinforcement and “inserting your (the Non’s) feelings” into the conversation. There are some other skills and sub-skills, but that’s a quick synopsis. IMO this complex combination of skills (which also require practice) will improve the relationship and make sure that you don’t “walk on eggshells” around the other person. Boundaries can help – however, boundaries are a subject unto themselves, and I find that most people don’t know what boundaries are and how to apply them properly.
• There was some argument at WTO that my motives were suspect, because I am trying to make some money on what I have learned and practiced thus far. I think the operative word here is trying, because I don’t really make enough money to even operate this website at a break-even level. No, I’ve not made much money at all as a “professional Non-BP” (if that’s what I am). What I have been able to do is have an impact on the lives of many people. That is pretty satisfying in itself, and I will not pretend that I wouldn’t like to do it full-time. I certainly enjoy interacting with others in my situation and exchanging advice, strategies, knowledge, etc. more than my “day-job.” But it will be a long time (and probably never) before I will be able to do that. Besides, most of my support activity and knowledge-sharing I do for free – either here on in my Google Group. There’s no charge for participating in that group or to read these posts. At this point, any money I do make just contributes to the cost of operating this website.
• I don’t think that BPs have to be “let off the hook” and that they have no responsibility when it comes to a relationship. I also don’t think that you, as a Non-BP, have to forgo your feelings to live alongside a person with BPD. Both of those ideas were suggested at WTO. Neither is true. I think everyone in a relationship will have emotions, reactions, expectations, etc. Everyone is allowed to have each of these. Everyone has certain responsibilities in a relationship as well. What I DO advocate is looking at the function behind behavior and understanding the dynamic that exists. Many times I’ve seen people suggest that my methods give the BP “undo advantage” in a relationship. Huh? I thought this was a “loved one?” I don’t think that “love is a battlefield.” It’s not us-agains- them. That is just more black-and-white thinking on the part of the Non. If you’re going through a bloody divorce with someone with BPD, I can certainly understand where this might come into play, but, as I have said, my methods are about “living with and loving” someone with BPD. There is responsibility on both sides of the fence. It takes a certain environment IMO to make sure that responsibility is acknowledged – and that environment has to be one that is validating, otherwise you’re going to be caught in a shame hurricane. Nothing will get accomplished.
• Finally, I believe that effective emotional skills are helpful for anyone in any relationship. Anger, sadness, spite, resentment, blame, etc., etc. lead to a corrosive environment within any relationship. My “methods” attempt to reverse some of the corrosiveness and build stronger, healthier emotional relationships. You may not agree with my methods, which is fine. Personally, I’ve had to try everything to find anything that worked.

I guess it’s better to be talked about a little, whether it is positive or negative, than to be ignored. Thanks to a group member of mine who notified me of the discussion and who defended me (you know who you are).

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Last November, she launched a campaign with vegetarian group Viva – which is also involved with her new book – encouraging people to drink rats’ and dogs’ milk to help save the planet.

Arguing that livestock creates more carbon emissions than transport, Heather suggested drinking the different milk could help cut global warming.

She said: “There are many other kinds of milk available. Why don’t we try drinking rats’ milk and dogs’ milk?”

Rats’ milk? Maybe she can show us how it’s done and drink it directly from the momma rat.

I wonder if her next book will be “Mental Health with Heather”? She needs some serious treatement for whatever condition she has. I find it sad that she is such a publicity hound. I guess her goody-goody reputation was impugned with all that nastiness with Paul. Maybe I need to do a long analysis of news stories to see where she lands on the celeb BPD-o-meter (hey, come to think of it, the celeb BPD-o-meter ain’t such a bad idea, hmmm…..). I know, I know, I’m pandering to the “celebrities with borderline personality disorder” crowd out there, but when 60% of my searches are about that subject, I guess I gotta feed the audience what they want (unless it’s rats’ milk – yuck!) – at least some of the time.

I do wish that some celeb would come out and be the face of BPD, maybe Sean Young? Her career needs a boost and some attention right now. And given that May IS BPD Awareness month, this would be a perfect opportunity for her (‘course I don’t KNOW she has BPD, but her behavior begs the question).

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Magistrate Tells Man to Kill Himself

(WXYZ) – Court officials in Novi say a magistrate “could have chosen better words” when she told a man convicted of drunk driving and other offenses that he should commit suicide by jumping to his death or slitting his wrists in a bathtub.

52nd District Court Magistrate Judith Holtz made the shocking statements during a hearing on April 10 as she was sentencing 20-year-old Michael Robert Dickey on a charge of Minor in Possession of alcohol. Dickey had two prior convictions for drunk driving and, according to the court, “had failed to comply with his bond conditions to remain drug and alcohol free.”

According to court transcripts obtained by WXYZ, Dickey admitted to Holtz that he’d “made a lot of mistakes” — and that’s when she unleashed from the bench.

“I don’t mean to be offensive, but you have two Operating While Intoxicated convictions and then you blow a .223 and you’re still not twenty one?, Holtz said.

“Here is my suggestion to you, Mr. Dickey, climb up on the roof of your house and jump off; either that or get in a bathtub filled with hot water and slash your wrists; then you will be dead; it will be cheaper; it will be faster and in the long run it will be less painful to anybody who cares about you, because that’s where you’re headed now, and the best part of it is you won’t take somebody else with you.

“Who do you think you are? You don’t have the right to go out there and endanger innocent people and you know it. And you have had two convictions for drunk driving and you’re not twenty one and you still drink.”

Holtz is a veteran magistrate who joined the court in 1992 after practicing law for 18 years. She declined to talk with WXYZ about the tirade, but 52nd District Court officials offered an explanation late Monday.

“The words chosen by the Court’s magistrate to convey the seriousness and severity of the defendant’s actions and crime could have been better chosen,” the court said in a statement. “The magistrate was attempting to convey, through an analogy, that the defendant’s actions and past behavior has continually put the community at risk.”

The court’s statement to WXYZ also sought to prove Dickey remains a risk to the community. “It should also be noted that Mr. Dickey, at a probation appointment on May 12, 2008, tested positive for cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines in a urine screen.” Dickey has been sent to a rehab program.

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Woman indicted in fatal MySpace hoax on girl

By Dan Whitcomb2 hours, 11 minutes ago

A 49-year-old Missouri mother accused of using a fake MySpace persona to “torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass” a 13-year-old girl who hanged herself was indicted on Thursday on federal charges.

Lori Drew, accused of helping dupe 13-year-old Megan Meier into believing she was chatting with a teenage boy, was indicted on conspiracy and other charges by a U.S. District Court jury in Los Angeles.

Meier’s suicide in October of 2006 made worldwide headlines and prompted calls for social networking sites like MySpace to crack down on cyber-bullying.

“Any adult who uses the Internet to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences,” U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien said in announcing the indictment.

Meier for several weeks had what she thought was an online relationship with the fictional 16-year-old boy, “Josh Evans,” when in fact she was exchanging messages with Drew and others.

Drew, 49, is the mother of a teenage girl who had a falling out with Meier.

Meier hanged herself in the closet of her bedroom in a St. Louis suburb on October 15, 2006, after “Evans” told her he did not want to be friends with her anymore and that “the world would be a better place without you.”

Prosecutors say Drew and others created the fake persona using the picture of an unwitting teenage boy.

A former employee of Drew, 19-year-old Ashley Grills, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview that she set up the fake MySpace account because Drew wanted to find out what Meier was saying about her daughter.

After Meier killed herself, Drew had the hoax MySpace account deleted and told an unnamed juvenile who knew about it that she should “keep her mouth shut,” according to the indictment.

It said “defendant Drew and the co-conspirators used the information obtained over the MySpace computer system to torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass the juvenile MySpace member.”

Drew, who faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison if she is convicted on all of the charges, was expected to surrender to authorities in Missouri.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)

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© 1998-2001 Deb Martinson. Reprint permission granted with proper credit to author.

So, it is rather old, but I think it still applies…

Bill of Rights for People Who Self-Harm

Preamble

An estimated one percent of Americans use physical self-harm as a way of coping with stress; the rate of self-injury in other industrial nations is probably similar. Still, self-injury remains a taboo subject, a behavior that is considered freakish or outlandish and is highly stigmatized by medical professionals and the lay public alike. Self-harm, also called self-injury, self-inflicted violence, or self-mutilation, can be defined as self-inflicted physical harm severe enough to cause tissue damage or leave visible marks that do not fade within a few hours. Acts done for purposes of suicide or for ritual, sexual, or ornamentation purposes are not considered self-injury. This document refers to what is commonly known as moderate or superficial self-injury, particularly repetitive SI; these guidelines do not hold for cases of major self-mutilation (i.e., castration, eye enucleation, or amputation).

Because of the stigma and lack of readily available information about self-harm, people who resort to this method of coping often receive treatment from physicians (particularly in emergency rooms) and mental-health professionals that can actually make their lives worse instead of better. Based on hundreds of negative experiences reported by people who self-harm, the following Bill of Rights is an attempt to provide information to medical and mental-health personnel. The goal of this project is to enable them to more clearly understand the emotions that underlie self-injury and to respond to self-injurious behavior in a way that protects the patient as well as the practitioner.

The Bill of Rights for Those who Self-Harm

1. The right to caring, humane medical treatment.
   Self-injurers should receive the same level and quality of care that a person presenting with an identical but accidental injury would receive. Procedures should be done as gently as they would be for others. If stitches are required, local anesthesia should be used. Treatment of accidental injury and self-inflicted injury should be identical.
2. The right to participate fully in decisions about emergency psychiatric treatment (so long as no one’s life is in immediate danger).
   When a person presents at the emergency room with a self-inflicted injury, his or her opinion about the need for a psychological assessment should be considered. If the person is not in obvious distress and is not suicidal, he or she should not be subjected to an arduous psych evaluation. Doctors should be trained to assess suicidality/homicidality and should realize that although referral for outpatient follow-up may be advisable, hospitalization for self-injurious behavior alone is rarely warranted.
3. The right to body privacy.
   Visual examinations to determine the extent and frequency of self-inflicted injury should be performed only when absolutely necessary and done in a way that maintains the patient’s dignity. Many who SI have been abused; the humiliation of a strip-search is likely to increase the amount and intensity of future self-injury while making the person subject to the searches look for better ways to hide the marks.
4. The right to have the feelings behind the SI validated.
   Self-injury doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The person who self-injures usually does so in response to distressing feelings, and those feelings should be recognized and validated. Although the care provider might not understand why a particular situation is extremely upsetting, she or he can at least understand that it *is* distressing and respect the self-injurer’s right to be upset about it.
5. The right to disclose to whom they choose only what they choose.
   No care provider should disclose to others that injuries are self-inflicted without obtaining the permission of the person involved. Exceptions can be made in the case of team-based hospital treatment or other medical care providers when the information that the injuries were self-inflicted is essential knowledge for proper medical care. Patients should be notified when others are told about their SI and as always, gossiping about any patient is unprofessional.
6. The right to choose what coping mechanisms they will use.
   No person should be forced to choose between self-injury and treatment. Outpatient therapists should never demand that clients sign a no-harm contract; instead, client and provider should develop a plan for dealing with self-injurious impulses and acts during the treatment. No client should feel they must lie about SI or be kicked out of outpatient therapy. Exceptions to this may be made in hospital or ER treatment, when a contract may be required by hospital legal policies.
7. The right to have care providers who do not allow their feelings about SI to distort the therapy.
   Those who work with clients who self-injure should keep their own fear, revulsion, anger, and anxiety out of the therapeutic setting. This is crucial for basic medical care of self-inflicted wounds but holds for therapists as well. A person who is struggling with self-injury has enough baggage without taking on the prejudices and biases of their care providers.
8. The right to have the role SI has played as a coping mechanism validated.
   No one should be shamed, admonished, or chastised for having self-injured. Self-injury works as a coping mechanism, sometimes for people who have no other way to cope. They may use SI as a last-ditch effort to avoid suicide. The self-injurer should be taught to honor the positive things that self-injury has done for him/her as well as to recognize that the negatives of SI far outweigh those positives and that it is possible to learn methods of coping that aren’t as destructive and life-interfering.
9. The right not to be automatically considered a dangerous person simply because of self-inflicted injury.
   No one should be put in restraints or locked in a treatment room in an emergency room solely because his or her injuries are self-inflicted. No one should ever be involuntarily committed simply because of SI; physicians should make the decision to commit based on the presence of psychosis, suicidality, or homicidality.
10. The right to have self-injury regarded as an attempt to communicate, not manipulate.
    Most people who hurt themselves are trying to express things they can say in no other way. Although sometimes these attempts to communicate seem manipulative, treating them as manipulation only makes the situation worse. Providers should respect the communicative function of SI and assume it is not manipulative behavior until there is clear evidence to the contrary.

Related posts:

1. Famous People who Cut themselves
2. Self harm on the increase in UK
3. Self-embedding: a new trend in self-harm?

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 So, I was a grumpy dude this morning. However, I downloaded a self-hypnosis mp3 the other day. Why? Well, one of the hypnosis titles was “overcome the fear of abandonment” and thought – BPD right?

 So, on the train I figured I’d listen to the hypnosis mp3. It is only 19 mintues so what the heck, right? I’ve never been hypnotized in my life and I figured, no way – this is bunk and won’t work. But you know what? I DID work. I got off the train feeling calm and refreshed. Amazing. With the help of the tape I hypnotized myself and it was extremely refreshing. I felt like I got 8 hours of sleep last night (or more) instead of the 2-3 I got. WOW. Maybe there’s some to this?

My BP wife says she can’t be hypnotized. I think ruminating is part of her feeling. What do you guys think? Have you every tried or have been hypnotized? Did it help?

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One interesting thing to note is that while 60% of the search terms involve celebrities with PDs (BPD, APD, NPD, others), only 43% of my page views are related to celebs. Only 2% of the search terms are related to BPD = evil (or demonic), 11% of my page views are about that subject. I can only suspect that there are links to my blog on certain subjects.

Anyway, 10% (and probably more, since that 20% of “BPD General” includes syndicated messages that cover coping) look to ATSTP for coping. I wish it were more, because that is what I hope to do with this blog. Raise awareness about BPD and help the Non-BPs with coping skills.

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As you can see, searches on celebrities with BPD (such as “Britney BPD, ” “celebrities bpd, ” “heather mills borderline, ” “angelina jolie BPD,” “famous bordrelines,” etc.) represent 60% of the search engine terms that hit my blog. Sad, but true.

Lying and liars represent 9% of the remaining 40%. So, of the remaining non-celeb searches, those looking for help with lying or liars and BPD equal 21% of the remaining total.

Pain or pain relief and BPD represents 17% of the non-celeb searches.

If you combine Coping skills and DBT, those represent about 21% of the total.

I find it interesting what people are looking for regarding BPD. It’s too bad that most are seeking information on celebs. Of course, I have started catering to that crowd – why? Because I must to get traffic. I hope that those people will stick around and read more about the disorder – instead of just looking for gossip.

I also hope to make this an on-going analysis…

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What irked me so about the “Mrs. Treasures” article about Demonic Possession and BPD was that it was indicative of a cognitive distortion that people with BPD often exhibit and one that can be transmitted to the Non-BP over time. That cognitive distortion is black-and-white thinking. It is the tendency for someone to think that something or someone is all good or all bad – good or evil. Framing BPD as analogous to demonic possession puts the borderline in the evil category and infers that the BP is a non’s enemy. People with BPD are not evil; they have a serious mental illness with areas of dysregulation, including behavioral dysregulation. Calling them evil is about as judgmental as one can be and being judgmental is counter-productive when it comes to supporting the healing of a loved one with BPD. That sentence brings me to another point. Mrs. Treasures uses the term “loved one” (and lover) several times in her article, but she expresses little love or sympathy for someone with BPD. If this person is your “loved one” aren’t you inclined to exhibit love toward them? The example that she cites in her article is from “Patrick” who is, of course, an ex-husband of a manipulative borderline woman. Since he is an ex-husband, I suppose he no longer considers his ex-wife a loved one.

And that brings me to another point that I have trouble with – especially in the online support community for nons. It is the fact that many people like to cite Hitler as an example of a historical borderline by stating something to the effect of “you know, arguably the most evil person in history was a borderline.” First of all, although some ex post facto psychological researchers have decided Hitler had BPD, others state that his mental disorders most likely arose from NPD or from an addiction to amphetamines. Certainly, considering yourself the savior of your nation, your race and the world would seem narcissistic to me anyway. Even though “narcissistic behavior” is stated in “Stop Walking on Eggshells” (SWOE) as a symptom of BPD, it is not really a primary symptom. It instead arises from black-and-white thinking and as a counter-balance to shame. It is not mentioned as one of the nine features of BPD in the DSM-IV. It is however mentioned as a primary feature of NPD.

When Hope is Not Enough
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staying and working on the relationship

Hitler’s evil arose not from his supposed borderline personality disorder. It arose from his “will to power” and his setting up an enemy (or several: the Jews, the Poles, the Allies, People with Mental Retardation, the Communists, etc.) that deserved death. He viewed these groups less than human and as an evil plague to the German people. Eradication was the only answer in his mind (or in the mind’s of those around him). That will to power is at the root of all big, historical evils in my opinion. You see it in Pol Pot, in Stalin, in Mao and in many others. The key point is that Hitler set up an “us vs. them” situation in which the German people had to fight to the death with their sworn enemies. If you consider a person with BPD evil (demonic) and yourself as good (Godly), you are setting up the same sort of dynamic with this other person. (OK, I’m not calling anyone Hitler here).

Technically, Hitler couldn’t be diagnosed with BPD (at least by American standards) because the diagnosis didn’t exist in the DSM until 1980. The word “borderline” has been around for a lot longer than that, but the actual diagnosis didn’t get codified until 1980. The diagnosis was still used though – as it was used for Susanna Kaysen (author of “Girl, Interrupted”) in the 1960s.

The historical example of BPD I like to reference (instead of Hitler) is Princess Diana. According to one of her chroniclers, Princess Di had BPD. Based on what I’ve read about her behavior (including bulimia, raging and cutting), if anyone was a likely candidate for BPD in history it’s Princess Di. What is extraordinarily sad about Princess Di was that she had to live much of her life in a fishbowl. That had to be extremely stressful for her. She was also capable of compassion for those in difficult situations, although ultimately Princess Di was a tragic figure and, in my opinion, more representational (than Hitler) of what the experience of a borderline is like.

Before you (as a non) decide that your “loved one” with BPD is evil, I suggest taking a step back and considering how tragic and painful the experience of BPD can be. Think of Princess Di, not Hitler.

Related posts:

1. Angelina Jolie Tops the List of Searched On Celeb Borderlines
2. Burnout, Compassion Fatigue and why non-BPDs lack compassion for borderlines
3. Borderlines vs. Psychopaths

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When Hope is Not Enough
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staying and working on the relationship

So here goes:

She says:

Dealing with Borderlines is like a spiritual warfare.

It is? How so? The remainder of the article doesn’t really answer that question.

She says:

What strange traits does a Borderline have that look like demon possession? Low, rasping moans and screams were escaping her mouth, which brought chills down your spine. You looked at her face and saw dark coal eyes, and as the moment intensified, her eyes turned red. Her transformation let you step back as you heard her laughing like a witch. She cursed and cussed you. Her stern voice turned to the most hideous sound you could imagine. In front of you was a woman with a pure-red face spitting anger and rage. It was scary.

Who is “you” in this? The woman’s husband? Where did this come from? “Low, rasping moans and screams”? I’m not sure where this incident comes from or who it is attributed to. I have certainly been the subject of rages in my years as a Non-BP, but this?

She says:

This scene is common among people with relationships with a person who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

It is? How does she know? From where does she gain such knowledge. Is it common among people she knows or what? I have been running an Internet List for Non-BP’s for almost three years now. I have found that this type of experience occurs sometimes within a Non-BP/BP relationship, but common? Hmmm….

She says:

“Life is hell” described literally by NONs or non-borderlines, a person who does not have BPD but has a loved one with BPD.

And yes, that is true. Life can seem like hell for Non-BPs (and BPs alike). My question is: From whom did she get this knowledge?

She says:

According to BorderlineCentral.com, Borderline Personality Disorder is a “real, diagnosable psychiatric disorder, and its criteria are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) published by the American Psychiatric Association.” There has been a stigma in the past for personality disorders such as BPD as a form of demonic possession. Up until the 19th century, personality disorders such as BPD began to take the form of “hysteria” in psychiatry.

OK, so it is a “real, diagnosable psychiatric disorder,” right? And that “there has been a stigma in the past for personality disorders such as BPD as a form of demonic possession.” So, let’s perpetuate that stigma, shall we? I mean, in one sentence she cites a source saying that BPD is a psychiatric disorder and in the next she mentions that in the past there has been a stigma of demonic possession? Where is the rational line of thought here?

She says:

Many articles have emerged on a possible link between demon possession and Borderline Personality Disorder.

Many articles? In respected journals or no? By BPD experts or no? Where are these articles?

She says:

Christopher H. Rosik in his article from the Journal of Psychology and Theology stated that “They have altered personalities and often exhibit behaviors that appear identical to traditional descriptions of possession: evil-appearing glares, angry voices, self-hatred, self-harm, aversion to God and religion, and other symptoms.”

Alright, I’ve got about 20 problems with this. First of all Christopher Rosik, Ph. D. was a past president of the “Christian Association for Psychological Studies” (see http://www.capswest.org/new/boardpage.asp). He participated as a psychologist in a forum entitled ” Critical Issues in the Dissociative Disorders Field: Six Perspectives from Religiously Sensitive Practitioners” and authored the transcript and review of a compilation of the study (see this link). He consistently publishes in the “Journal of Psychology and Theology” which is not a main-line psychological journal. It is one dedicated to the following purpose:

Purpose

The purpose of the Journal of Psychology and Theology is to communicate recent scholarly thinking on the interrelationships of psychological and theological concepts, and to consider the application of these concepts to a variety of professional settings. The major intent of the editor is to place before the evangelical community articles that have bearing on the nature of humankind from a biblical perspective. (see https://wisdom.biola.edu/jpt/about.cfm)

So, there’s the source with which I have an initial problem.

Then there’s the content of the quote. He states:

…appear identical to traditional descriptions of possession: evil-appearing glares, angry voices, self-hatred, self-harm, aversion to God and religion….

“Traditional descriptions of possession?” Perhaps those “traditional descriptions” were not describing possession at all, but were instead describing a psychiatric disorder as mentioned above? By “linking” traditional descriptions of possession and behaviors that are sometimes included in BPD, he tries to create validity for traditional descriptions of possession that is just not there. I could do the same thing with any “traditional description” of behavior that has been attributed to a believed cause in the past. In Salem, during the witch hysteria, we could call these people witches, correct? Does that lend any credence whatsoever to the fact that they are or are not witches?

Now, the behaviors he describes:

evil-appearing glares…

Evil to whom?

…aversion to God and religion…

Wait a minute here. I have found that many BPs (though certainly not all) have an attachment to religion, particularly to the fundamentalist Christian faith. There are at least five to ten examples that I could cite from my Internet List of extremely devout Christian BPs. In some senses, they seem to be drawn to the idea of judgment of themselves and others and strict religious views actually reinforce the sense of judgment. They find themselves and others to be all good (in God’s graces) or all evil (in the hands of the devil). This is a function of black-and-white thinking, not temporary demonic possession.

The author of this article goes on to cite a case of an ex-husband (of course an ex) whose ex-wife had “borderline personality disorder.” I put it in quotes because I don’t know if this woman was diagnosed. The author describes some behavior that might indicate BPD – jealously, emptiness, rage, manipulation, etc. – but we don’t know if the ex-husband is reporting all this truthfully and, if he is, whether the condition is another disorder. Let’s assume the ex-wife does have BPD. Some of the language used to describe her behavior is clearly judgmental such as:

With children she can use as pawns, Renee became a very manipulative person.

To get what she wants, Renee snatched her children out-of-state to pressure Patrick to her whims. Patrick was hesitant to marry her.

She would wait all day counting the minutes until he returns home and gives him a guilt trip for her feelings of emptiness.

To free herself from the shame and guilt of her decision, she brainwashed the children on the evils of their faith.

And some of the text doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me:

He was now very familiar with Renee’s mood swings. It alternates with periods of intense depression.

What alternates with periods of depression? As for mood swings, yes, that is the whole nature of the disorder. Then we hear that the ex-wife:

She dabbled into wicca, tarot cards, new age and psychic readings. She went to party at night and eventually found a lover 11 years her junior.

Well, if she “dabbled into wicca, tarot cards, new age and psychic readings” she must be possessed huh? And how does finding a lover 11 years her junior go into the same paragraph as “dabbling” in those things? Are they equivalent?

Now we get a real kicker:

The children have not been going to their church for a long time after the couple’s separation. So Patrick brought a holy “host” from the Catholic Church so the older children can receive Holy Communion. In the Catholic Church, Holy Communion is actually receiving “Jesus Christ” and is held with much reverence. Upon seeing this, Renee burst into an uncontrollable anger. She screamed like a possessed woman and ran to the hosts. She grabbed them, threw them on the floor and stamped her feet hoping to crush the host into pieces. This act is considered “sacrilegious” in the Catholic Church and may be considered comparable to a demonic possession.

So, the wife doesn’t want the religion of her ex-husband in her house. Her impulsive and out-of-portion reaction is typical of emotional dysregulation. However, according to the author she “screamed like a possessed woman” (again, like a possessed woman to whom?). Then she committed a sacrilegious (in quotes for some unknown reason) act – one that the Catholic Church “may consider comparable to demonic possession.” OK, well… if the Catholic Church “may” consider it “comparable to demonic possession,” is it an indication of possession or not? And, again, what authority does the Catholic Church have in the area of psychiatric disorders? Either it’s a psychiatric disorder or it is possession, right? Or could it be both? Clearly, the author is exposing her own biases toward the beliefs of the Catholic Church, rather than an intimate knowledge of the dynamic underpinnings of BPD.

She goes on to say:

The once attractive spouses that enchanted NONs turn into gruesome-looking beings with glaring, black coal eyes turning red and watery.

They do? Dang, I better watch out for that transformation. I know that people with BPD can get hateful and hateful-looking when angry, but everyone gets that way when that angry. BPs have trouble regulating their emotions and emotions feed other emotions. Sure, you get a very angry person, but that is all you have, not a demonical possessed person.

She goes on:

Most NONs claim that their BPD lover’s demeanor changes abruptly. They had a sneer on their faces and acted as if they were in another dimension. They would flinch whenever Jesus Christ or God was mentioned. They would scream with the worst blasphemy one could imagine. It is surprising how many NONs experience similar mannerisms and facial expressions from their Borderline loved ones.

“Most” NONs? From which source does she get that data? How many NONs has she talked with? I have talked with literally hundreds, in-person and online, and, while they are clearly exasperated by their BPs behavior, I’m not sure how “it is surprising how many NONs experience similar mannerisms…” is being backed up here. If someone is angry, sure, they will have certain facial expressions and mannerisms, but that is true of anyone, not just BPs. The key is what to do about it.

Oh and as for BPs that “flinch whenever Jesus Christ or God was mentioned” – that has not been my experience. Where did she get that? As I have said several BPs I know use Jesus or God to judge others and themselves. The idea that there can be an ultimate decider of good and evil can be very attractive to someone with BPD.

OK, some more:

Demon possession in itself is a taboo subject. But for non-Christians, the evils of Borderlines must have another rational explanation.

Well, I suppose it is a “taboo subject” because it is hogwash. Then she says, “But for non-Christians…” – why use the word “but”? To me it makes no sense. As for the “evils” that “must have another rational explanation” – uh, yeah, it is called a psychiatric disorder that involves dsyregulation is several areas. The foremost of these areas are emotional dysregulation, impulsiveness and shame. I wonder if telling someone with a psychiatric disorder that they might have difficulty controlling without medication and therapy that they are possessed by demonic forces might cause more shame and fear in them. Hmmm? Maybe we need to start calling people with cancer sinners that deserve what they get. I’m sure most tumors, genetic diseases, mental disorders, malformations and skin rashes all have a spiritual dimension. Perhaps it is the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children?

And yet more:

However, they do not deny how a Borderline’s presence exhibits darkness, lies, betrayal, greed, addiction, abuse, pride, control, manipulation, hatred and rebellion. All are elements of spiritual bondage yielding sin.

Great. I can’t think of anything more invalidating to a person with an emotional disorder to compare their state with demonic possession. I mean, think about it. Let’s suppose you are angry at something and your NON says, “Well, the reason that you feel this way and act this way is that you are possessed with a demon.” That’s worst than, “You’re crazy” is it not? Or maybe it can get the BP out of some blame for his or her actions. After all, if the devil made you do it….

The point is this woman is being extremely invalidating to the BPs whatever her point and conclusion. That sort of invalidation is something that has contributed to the disorder all a BP’s life. Calling a person with BPD a “possessed” person is extremely invalidating to the person’s emotional responses. And, what if the borderline is your child? The author seems only to be addressing “BP lovers” here, but if your child is borderline, is she also “possessed”?

She then says:

Patrick did his best to get help for Renee. Patrick sought the help of his spiritual director in the hope of finding answers to his predicament.

Well, I’m not sure that Patrick “did his best to get help” for his Ex. The author certainly doesn’t convince me he did his best. First of all, you can’t “get help” for another person. I’m sorry but that just upsets a person with BPD. If you are saying essentially, “You need help” or “You have a mental problem” or worse “You are possessed by a demon” I don’t call that “doing one’s best.” Maybe instead of (or better in addition to) going to his spiritual advisor he could have looked into DBT and DBT family skills, Patrick could have done a little better than his best.

OK, there’s still more:

His spiritual director advised that he remain steadfast in his prayers and God will hear him. With trust in God, Patrick focused on saving his children. He taught his children to pray together and pray for their Borderline mother. One day, Renee found the children an inconvenience and decided to give custody to Patrick.

Well, I glad the praying worked for “Patrick” (not his real name). Actually, prayer is suggested by DBT as a way to help tolerate distress. I still wonder though, based on the configuration of this paragraph, whether the prayer caused Renee to find the children an “inconvenience”? I guess so.

OK, now for her conclusion:

The Borderline exhibits traits and characteristics similar to a person being possessed or oppressed.

There seems to be a major hedging here. “Possessed or oppressed?” Which is it?

It seems that possession is a fact in this author’s mind, so no need to question the actual existence of possession, right?

Now she says:

Many believe that evil preys on the weaknesses of people.

“Many?” OK, who? What does one back that statement up with? And also, evil as a spiritual force seems to be a given here.

And now we get:

Many NONs, who have successfully departed from the vicious relationship with a Borderline, swear that their Borderlines Ex have been taken over by “something”.

Of course they have “departed from the vicious relationship.” And they should be listened to? Why is it that all the ex-es rule the day when it comes to the opinions of the borderline’s behavior? How about actually educating yourself about BPD and then deciding what is actually happening? Sure, these people are taken over by “something” – it’s called strong negative emotions and it happens to everyone from time-to-time. It probably happens more often to someone with BPD, because of the nature of the disorder, not because there are demonic forces at work.

Now she says:

When we deal with evil, there is no recourse but to look at things from a spiritual dimension.

Oh really? OK, well who decided that the BP is evil, not just sick or mentally disabled, she is EVIL! And, “no recourse but to look at things from a spiritual dimension?” Says who? The author? God? True evil, if it exists and I might argue that it does in certain people (but not demonic possession, just evil and destructive thoughts and actions), can be dealt with by applying human morals, resolve and compassion. The idea that in order for evil to exist there must be a force that drives evil instead of say, mental disease, is not a leap that I am willing to take. Clearly, the author has already taken this leap in her faith and has decided that, if evil exists, then evil spiritual force also must be at work.

Now she says:

There are a few treatment options for BPD.

Well, actually, there are many treatment options for BPD and some are more effective than others. DBT, SFT and Mentalization have all been shown more effective than therapy-as-usual when it comes to BPD. The increase of acceptance + mindfulness with traditional CBT also seems to be effective in treating BPD.

And she concludes with this:

Dealing with the evil and chaos of the relationship with a Borderline can be analogous to a spiritual warfare. The spiritual warrior must seek to constantly strengthen himself in an understanding of God’s truth. As you struggle to deal with the chaos and oppression, trust God for He will lead you to the truth. He will be the only armor you’ll need for shield and protection. God’s matchless weapons are mercy and peace.

I wonder why she bothers to hedge yet again with the phrase “can be analogous to”? I mean, if spiritual forces are at work and it is a war between good and evil being fought on a spiritual dimension, then why bother? Clearly the NON is on the side of good and Godliness (if he/she “seeks to constantly strengthen himself”) and the BP is one the side of the demonic and evil forces. In her opinion as we struggle to “deal with the chaos and oppression,” trusting in God is the answer to lead you to the truth – although I am having difficulty making heads or tails of the truth in her article. Is she saying that BPD = demonic possession or BPD is like demonic possession – and, if it is the latter – why do we have to make use of our spiritual warfare stances to deal with this “evil?”

I’d like to conclude by stating two reasons that I bothered to review this article in such detail. One is that I think that comparing BPD to demonic possession merely further strengthens an “us vs. them” mentality that has already been perpetuated all over the Internet and in books for Nons. It is a basic misunderstanding of the disorder and invalidates the natural responses of the sufferer. Plus, if they believe you are against them and judge them as evil, you’re in for a whole lot of trouble. Secondly, I am not dismissing that prayer can offer solace to anyone, including the Nons. At the same time, my prescription for a Non is not to rely entirely on prayer. It is instead to learn the dynamics of the disorder and acquire the emotional skills necessary to more effectively handle a person with BPD.

Calling them possessed or evil is just going to make things much worse.

Related posts:

1. Celebrities with Borderline Personality Disorder (possibly, not for sure)
2. Ten signs of possible Borderline Personality Disorder in children
3. Book Review: Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder

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But I regret to have to say I cannot say the same about the wife’s evidence. Having watched and listened to her give evidence, having studied the documents, and having given in her favour every allowance for the enormous strain she must have been under (and in conducting her own case) I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid. Overall she was a less than impressive witness.
….

The proposed Amended Petition alleged a number of matters against the wife of verbal abuse, extreme jealousy, false accusations of violence, and that throughout the marriage the wife had shown a consistent inability to tell the truth.
….

I assume for the purpose of this judgment only that in those interviews the wife lost her cool completely, went right over the top, and behaved in an erratic, out of control, and vengeful manner.

Ouch! OK, I took them out of context, but still – ouch!

Related posts:

1. Heather Mills to write “book” giving health advice
2. Heather Locklear checks into in-patient facility

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ABC News Report of Suicide Story

I decided to use this report to point out something important about this story. What her parents have gone through in this case is monstrously painful and I don’t, by any means, take up this tragedy to criticize her mother. I can only imagine the amount of pain and anguish her mother and father must be going through. I know if one of my children did this I’d be beside myself in grief and loss.

The reason I bring it up is because of this quote from her mother about the details of the incident:

Megan was distraught. Tina, angry about the nasty online exchanges, insisted that Megan log off the computer.

“Megan got upset with me and yelled — not yelled, but was crying and said ‘You’re supposed to be my Mom and you’re supposed to be on my side,’ and then took off running upstairs,” said Tina.

Twenty minutes later, Tina went to check on her daughter and made a horrible discovery. “I went upstairs and opened the door and saw her hanging in the closet,” she said. “And I screamed and ran over and tried picking her up.”

The key to this interchange is that Megan was distraught. Her mother could see that plainly. I find it unfortunate that her mother apparently had not be trained in validation and emotional distress skills. If her mother HAD been so trained, I suspect she might have approached Megan differently. When someone is emotionally upset and dysregulated, especially in as much pain as Megan obviously was at the time, the best approach is not criticism, but validation.

Like I said, I don’t think the mother’s (Tina’s) reaction is unusual, nor am I saying that a different response might have prevented her suicide. However, when someone is THAT emotional and “distraught” as her mother indicated, the most effective response is validation of the emotions (which is not agreement with behavior). Based on her response to her mother I see certain things: 1) She did not yell, she cried… that is sadness, not anger in her and 2) She took the mother’s response as judgmental and critical of her, at a time when she was emotionally vulnerable and 3) She felt attacked and without comfort (the “not on my side” comment). Again, before I get angry emails defending her mother, it should be stated that her mother didn’t CAUSE the original problem – that was caused by Megan’s own emotional reactions to the “mean” messages. The messages themselves (since we don’t have the full text of them) could have been vicious and nasty, but, even if they were, Megan’s REACTION to the messages – her emotional reaction – was what was at issue. By not being validating of Megan’s emotional reaction, her mother (inadvertently for certain) invalidated her child’s emotional reaction. Emotional invalidation causes despondency and shame.

I wonder what would have been Megan’s reaction had her mother validated her emotions by saying FIRST: “Wow, Megan you look so sad, what happened?” And then after finding out, she had said, “I can see how these mean messages would make you feel so sad. I think anyone who received these would feel both sad and angry. I can also see why you responded with such anger. Those messages would make me mad too.” Finally, if she’d left the “teaching/scolding” moment about the language in the messages until later – who knows what would have happened?

My point is that it is extremely important that parents, partners and friends of highly emotional people (and in highly emotionally-charged situations) learn some emotional validation skills. Again, I don’t know if it would or could have prevented Megan’s death, but if they come at the right moment, these skills can help cool down the emotions so that a child has the opportunity to make a different (and hopefully, more effective) decision.

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Amy Winehouse and her husband basically got into a fist fight last night which left them both bloodied and bruised. Apparently Amy’s husband walked in on her cutting herself and about to do drugs with a prostitute when he intervened. The Daily Mail reports:

At around 2.30am, said guests, the fight sounded like it had restarted – then Miss Winehouse was seen sprinting down the corridor to the lift, pursued by her badly bleeding husband. One guest who got into the lift to reception at the same time said they started shouting at each other. “Amy was in floods of tears. This guy was screaming at her. She was cowering in the corner and I thought he was going to hit her. When the lift door opened, she took off across the lobby at a real pace. He was chasing after her and was about five paces behind by the time she got to the main hotel entrance.”The couple then dashed into the street. An eyewitness said: “Just after 3am, Amy came sprinting out and down the road. She was in a real state of panic. Blake was running after her, but couldn’t catch up.”

And like a good wife, Amy defends her husband, saying he was saving her life by beating her up:

“Blake is the best man in the world. We would never ever harm each other… I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn’t good enough for him. I lost it and he saved my life.”

So not only did a 60 pound Amy Winehouse beat this guy up, she also outran him. Careful people, we may be dealing with the toughest man on the planet here. I hear he tames bears just by looking at them. Seriously though, this guy seems about as athletic as a grilled cheese sandwich. If you gave him a gun he’d almost be able to take on a girl scout.

as reported by the sperficial.com
Actual Story

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1. Amy Winehouse Crops Up Again
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3. Amy Winehouse found dead at 27

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Well, folks, I was wrong. This book is about nons and ways for the nons to handle the BP’s behavior. Unfortunately, for the BPs, it does nothing to help them heal. In fact, the idea of setting limits and boundaries for BPs only serves to pissd them off more. Let me tell you why:

BPD is a disorder in which the sufferer feels emotions more strongly that a normal person.

When they are in the throes of a deep feeling, they cannot think logically. The limit that you set merely acts as a judgement of their behavior and boundary to be stepped over. They need to feel that they are OK. They live in a state of shame. If you tell them, through boundaries, that they are not OK, the message merely serves to fuel the deeply-felt emotion of shame. The behavior will get worse and you will get even angrier. This cycle of shame-anger between you and the BP serves to make you feel even more like leaving, like they can’t be “cured” and distances you from them even more. That is the real BP “dance” or “merry-go-round”.

When talking recently to the BP in my life, she had been reading a post on the Internet about “boundaries” and “limits” when dealing with borderlines. The post said this man’s ex-wife was a borderline – a nigtmare and a total abuser of him and the relationship. So, he left her. I wonder how that made her feel? Shamed further, perhaps?

I’m not saying that everyone should stay with their BP partner. What I am saying is: if you decide to stay, you should help that person heal, rather than set limits, sign contracts, be angry, etc.

Remember, borderlines suffer a lot of internal pain. All day, everyday. And they will do anything to stop the pain, including cutting, starving, raging, spending and attempting suicide.

Buy the book that can make your relationship last and grow:

When Hope is Not Enough
Get the Non-BPD book that is designed for
staying and working on the relationship

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