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How to Get Through Crisis
Crisis response coping is crucial for individuals with poor emotion regulation How to Get Through Crisis By SARA STAGGS, LICSW, MPH ~ 2 min read Distress is a fact of life. It’s a wide range of triggers: it’s not always our turn, or we have bad luck, or we make a bad decision and have to suffer the consequences or we experience oppression and injustice and so on. How upsetting these different degrees of distress are depends not only on the magnitude of the event, it depends on us—the same event may be annoying to one person and catastrophic to another. Most of us have different ways of dealing with…
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The Scarlet Label: Close Encounters with ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’
If so-called ‘borderline personality disorder’ symptoms are really responses to an unpredictable and perhaps unsafe environment then the real shame of it is that we are stigmatizing people that disclose the pain of our human world. We are judging people who have sensitive dispositions and absorb the world around them; people who are essentially struggling with basic life issues. And as a system – the mental health system – that sort of prides itself on exploring human behavior without judgment, this is a failure — not on our client’s part, but on the part of professionals and systems that are supposed to be caring for them. The Scarlet Label: Close…
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Dad, I’m in pain
About 8-9 years ago one of my daughters said this to me. She said “Dad, I’m in pain.” She had been having troubles at school. She had been hitting other children in anger. She had been doing poorly in school. I had an educational assessment done on her and found that she was full of anxiety. She scored superior on some psychological tests. She scored so poorly on some tests that she seemed retarded. She was all over the map. The second half of her assessment was about her emotional state. It read like a child borderline. She was unable to regulate her emotions. She was shameful, angry and anxious.…
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Reorienting a Depressed Patient to Address Underlying BPD
Undesirable living situations and/or failures to achieve what you expect of yourself exacerbate and prolong depression. Reorienting a Depressed Patient to Address Underlying BPD John Gunderson, M.D. October 08, 2013 DOI: 10.1176/appi.pn.2013.11a23 A 22-year-old African-American male named Morris was referred to me by Dr. Henri. Morris was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) after a nonlethal overdose had led to an ER visit. This event occurred after several years in which his “treatment-resistant” depression had persisted despite many medication trials. Neatly dressed in black jeans and shirt, he seemed wary and perhaps, I thought, a bit frightened when he arrived. While we were in the waiting room, his worried overweight…
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From the NY Times: Sharp Rise in Women’s Deaths From Overdose of Painkillers
More women now die of overdoses from pain pills like OxyContin than from cervical cancer or homicide. Sharp Rise in Women’s Deaths From Overdose of Painkillers By SABRINA TAVERNISE Published: July 2, 2013 PORTSMOUTH, Ohio — Prescription pain pill addiction was originally seen as a man’s problem, a national epidemic that began among workers doing backbreaking labor in the coal mines and factories of Appalachia. But a new analysis of federal data has found that deaths in recent years have been rising far faster among women, quintupling since 1999. More women now die of overdoses from pain pills like OxyContin than from cervical cancer or homicide. And though more men…
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Mindy McCready dies in apparent suicide
The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons. Mindy McCready dies in apparent suicide (LINK) HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) — Perhaps there was one heartbreak too many for Mindy McCready. The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons.…