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 Lindsay Lohan Breaks Down in Court Well, it’s been some time since I have written anything about celebrities with possible borderline personality disorder. Personally, I wish some celeb would just come out and admit that they have the disorder and help others by showing that there’s effective evidence-based treatments for BPD. I guess the stigma is too great and they feel that it would hurt their careers. Of course, for some, their behavior is what is hurting their careers. Today, I am turning again to Lindsay Lohan (click here to see all posts about LiLo). Lately I have been receiving a ton of alerts with news stories that contain LiLo’s name and reference BPD. These are usually in the user comments. I can’t find a single legit magazine or news article that has speculated on BPD and LiLo. Recently, her behavior has accelerated, even as she is facing jail. Here are some recent articles that could indicate that (in combo) LiLo has BPD (remember, this is just speculation at this point):
Lindsay Lohan goes Doctor Shopping
http://entertainment.oneindia.in/hollywood/top-stories/scoop/2010/lilodoes-doctor-shopping-for-prescriptionmeds.html
Washington, July 12 (ANI): Lindsay Lohan apparently obtains her dangerous combination of prescription drugs through “doctor shopping” across the country.
According to a source, Lohan goes to six different doctors for prescriptions.
“When one doctor says no to refilling a prescription, she will go to the next. It’s a whole process to get what she needed, ” TMZ quoted the source as saying.
Lindsay who has prescriptions for- Zoloft (antidepressant), Trazodone (antidepressant), Adderall (stimulant to control ADHD), Nexium (acid reflux) and the extremely powerful painkiller Dilaudid, have doctors both in Los Angeles and New York.
In fact, one of her past rehab facilities still prescribes her meds.
The source even added that, Lohan “would get a large supply every time” she visited a doctor.
Lindsay Lohan and Suicidal Ideation
http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2010/07/14/lindsay-lohan-suicide-watch-kill-herself-jail-90-days/
Lindsay Lohan would rather kill herself than be locked away in jail. The 24-year-old actress is reportedly so upset over the 90 day jail sentence looming over her since July 6, that she’s threatening to take her own life.
“She just kept repeating, ‘I can’t go to jail,’ and, ‘I’ll kill myself first,’” a source tells Star magazine. “She’s mentally unstable and getting worse.”
After Lindsay’s discovered she’d be serving time at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, Calif., Star reports she went home and broke everything in sight.
“She ran around breaking mirrors, cutting herself and rambling like a lunatic. She tore her house apart before she finally just broke down,” reveals a source. “Lindsay’s on a 24/7 suicide watch, it’s so bad. She isn’t doing well with this.”
Not only is Lindsay going around saying she wants to kill herself but she’s taking a lethal dose of prescription drugs.
“She has been doctor shopping across the country,” she says. “She is utterly unable to control her use of any mind-altering substance.”
Lindsay Lohan and Self-Injury
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/11/exclusive-self-harm-sign-%E2%80%9Cseverely-disturbed-behavior%E2%80%9D
In shocking phone conversations exclusively obtained by RadarOnline.com Lindsay Lohan’s mom, Dina, is heard expressing her concern over her daughter’s self mutilation. And with good reason, as experts in the field tell RadarOnline.com that self harm is often just one factor of greater, underlying emotional issues.
Renown psychotherapist, and author of Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation, Dr. Steven Levenkron tells RadarOnline.com that Lindsay’s behavior is a sign of disturbed psychiatric behavior and that it will take time and energy to help her heal. “Whether (a given patient’s) condition is termed being ‘out of touch with reality,’ ‘psychotic,’ or ‘in a diagnosed state,’ the scene constitutes severely disturbed psychiatric behavior,” Levenkron says. “ This is the element that must be present in order to meet the criteria for self-injury. ‘Severely disturbed behavior’ does not mean hopeless, but it does mean that it will take a long time, lots of focused attention, and an intense emotional bond between helper and sufferer in order to repair the damage.”
And Dr. Wendy Lader, PHD, President and Clinical Director of the S.A.F.E ALTERNATIVES program, a nationally recognized treatment approach, professional network and resource base, and an international speaker on self-injury elaborates, telling RadarOnline.com, “The main reason for self injury is to deal with emotional regulation. For whatever reason it helps them to calm down.
“People who self harm have the inability to communicate the depth of their feelings.
Continue reading Lindsay Lohan and possible BPD (more detail this time) →
I stumbled on this sad story of a woman with BPD…
Failure of system spirals into family tragedy
George and Alice Schellenberg took it as good news when their daughter Laura, just out of high school, coming off a nervous breakdown, was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Borderline. How bad could that be?
Over the next 17 years, the Saanich couple found out.
It was hell. Laura began doing things totally out of character — she shoplifted, got angry, shaved her head twice, began cutting herself, then tattooed the lacerations on her arms.
On and on. She worked as a hairdresser and had a doting partner, but the internal demons were always there to pull her down. Obsessive compulsive disorder and severe depression piled on. She wouldn’t open her mail. Wouldn’t pay bills. Wouldn’t answer the phone. She could be anxious, unresponsive, violent. Doctors just increased her medication.
Her parents desperately tried to get her help, but there was always a barrier, a box that couldn’t be ticked, to prevent her from getting into a program or facility. “There was always something that didn’t fit,” George says. Most of the time, the system would spit her back out, so it fell to her parents to pick up the pieces on their own.
Desperate for advice from the professionals, they got none. Indeed, privacy laws prevented mental-health workers from bringing George and Alice into the loop. “Nobody ever told us how we could help,” he says.
Laura’s disease would sometimes lead her to sabotage her own life when things were going too well. One day in February 2008, thinking it might get her admitted to a hospital where a “new doctor” would help her with her obsessive thoughts, she started a small fire in her living room. Instead, she got done for arson and was locked away. “That was the beginning of the spiral with the corrections system,” George says.
In November 2008, her obsessive compulsive disorder sent her to her now ex-partner’s home in Duncan, a breach of her probation. Charged with assault, she was incarcerated in the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre, even though everyone — cops, lawyers, health professionals — agreed that kind of confinement was the worst thing for her. Laura got depressed, wouldn’t eat or wash and ended up in solitary for much of the four months she spent awaiting trial. Her parents’ pleas that she needed to be in a psychiatric hospital with ongoing treatment fell on deaf ears. Laura lost 100 pounds.
On April 7, she went to court, where the court-appointed psychiatrist suggested federal time — two years plus — so that she could get better mental-health treatment not available at the provincial system. The judge agreed.
Laura’s lawyer and parents were aghast at the idea of her being locked up for that long. Fine, said the judge, your option is to take her yourself: 18 months of home arrest, with Laura not even allowed out for a walk around the block.
Stuck in their home, she sank further into depression. On Easter weekend, after she asked for a gun with which to kill herself, Laura’s parents took her to the Archie Courtnall Centre. Continue reading Sad story of a young woman with BPD →
Uh, duh… Of course it makes them feel better. That’s the point. It’s not effective or productive, but it’s about pain management.
Some kids hurt themselves to feel better
By Theodore Beauchaine, Special to CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Theodore Beauchaine says he sees rise in youth self-injury, such as cutting, burning
- Syndrome crosses culture, class; it’s linked to suicide, yet research funding lags, he says
- Kids say they self-injure to help deal with negative emotions, he says, but studies are sparse
- Beauchaine: U.S. must boost funding for study of self-injury
Editor’s note: Theodore Beauchaine is the Robert Bolles and Yasuko Endo Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, where he is also director of the Child and Adolescent Adjustment Project. He is editor of “Child and Adolescent Psychopathology,” associate editor of the journal “Psychophysiology” and a contributing author to the upcoming “Oxford Handbook of Suicide and Self-injury.”
Seattle, Washington (CNN) — They come from all walks of life. One teenage girl cuts her thighs after piano lessons to avoid the crushing pressure for perfection. She sees a therapist twice a week, but she never gets better.
Another young woman makes dangerous cuts to her arms and wrists when she is anxious. She is on her fourth foster placement because no one can handle her behavior. Another burns her fingers with a cigarette lighter when she hears her parents fight. She’s been hospitalized twice in the past year.
Stories such as these are heard daily by those of us who study and treat self-injury — that is, any activity resulting in intentional bodily damage to oneself. It is a syndrome found across cultures and socioeconomic classes (although it tends to be a bit more common among the more well-off), and it appears to be on the rise.
Though cutting the skin with sharp objects is the most common method used, especially by girls, other means of self-injury including head banging, overdosing, burning, hanging, drowning and shooting.
Given its potential for death and serious injury, this phenomenon has received increasing media attention, with a number of movies, such as “Secretary” in 2002, portraying the phenomenon.
From my perspective, this is an urgent public health issue, yet funding for research and treatment lags well behind funding for other behavioral disorders, such as autism.
Self-injury is troubling for several reasons.
First of all, almost 400,000 adolescents and young adults were treated medically for self-inflicted injuries in 2006, the most recent year for which these injuries were counted.
One recent study revealed that the number of children and adolescents in the U.S. who were hospitalized for depression, which is sometimes accompanied by self-injury among youth, increased by 27 percent between 1997 and 2007.
Second, self-injury is associated with crippling psychiatric distress. Girls who engage in such behaviors score lower than their peers on almost all measures of positive psychological adjustment, such as sociability, and higher than their peers on almost all measures of negative psychological adjustment, such as depression and delinquency.
Third, adolescent self-injury is linked to adult borderline personality disorder — a chronic and difficult to treat mental health condition characterized by impulsive behaviors, difficulties self-regulating emotions, mood instability and high rates of suicide.
Finally, self-injury is the single best predictor of suicide. Intentional self-injurers are about 75 times more likely to kill themselves than others in the population, an especially alarming statistic.
Scientists are not sure why rates of self-injury appear to be on the rise, or how to stop the trend.
When teens who self-injure are asked why they do it, most say the behaviors help them regulate overwhelming negative emotions, including anger, sadness and rejection. This emotion-regulating function may occur because injuries trigger the release of endogenous opioids, chemicals produced by the body that relieve pain. Over repeated episodes of self-harm, the endogenous opioid system may become more efficient at reducing physical and psychological pain.
Recent studies conducted at high schools and universities reveal that almost 20 percent of individuals self-injure at least once, and about 11 percent self-injure repeatedly.
Given how common the behavior is — and the alarmingly high risk of eventual suicide — one might expect self-injury to be a major public health priority. One might also expect considerable investment into basic science aimed at understanding the brain mechanisms involved and treatment-outcome research aimed at developing effective interventions.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Little is known about the brain mechanisms of self-injury, particularly in adolescence, and traditional approaches to treatment usually involve inpatient hospitalization, which is more cost-effective than individual care.
However, when treated in groups, as is often the case in hospitalization, self-injuring girls often become worse, not better, an effect known as contagion. (Note that this can also occur through access to Web sites and Web postings in which self-injurers share strategies.)
Nevertheless, there has been some progress toward understanding and treating adolescent self-injury.
On the basic research side, Christina Derbidge, a graduate student in my lab, is conducting a study in which the brains of adolescent girls who engage in self-injury are imaged as they cope with negative emotions.
On the treatment side, Dr. Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy at the University of Washington is signs of hope. The therapy is a variant of cognitive therapy and an effective treatment for adults with borderline personality disorder. It has been adapted to adolescent patients with encouraging results.
Despite these positive developments, a much greater investment is needed. For fiscal year 2010, the National Institutes of Health –far and away the primary source of funding for health research in the world — projects spending $41 million on suicide and suicide prevention (NIH does not report specific funding figures for self-injury).
In contrast, NIH expenditures for autism are expected to be $141 million in 2010. Corrected for the higher prevalence rate of suicide, this translates into a six-fold greater investment per person with autism.
Indeed, across the past five years, NIH has spent more than $700 million on autism research, with impressive results in terms of treatment effectiveness and our understanding of the genetic and neural underpinnings of the disorder. Given the urgency of preventing suicide among our youth, a similar investment is needed in self-injury research.
Woman Eats 78 Forks and Spoons
Updated: Saturday, 31 Oct 2009, 1:37 PM EDT
Published : Saturday, 31 Oct 2009, 1:35 PM EDT
By MIKE BRODY
(MYFOX NATIONAL) – A woman obsessed with eating cutlery had to have surgery to remove 78 forks and spoons from her stomach, the Daily Mail reports .
Margaret Daalman, 52, went to the hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, complaining of stomach pains. Doctors were stunned when X-ray’s of Dallman’s stomach (see pictures of the X-rays) revealed several pieces of silverware.
Dallman was rushed into surgery where doctors intricately removed all of the cutlery.
“She seems to have been suffering from some sort of obsession and every time she sat down for a meal she would ignore the food and eat the cutlery,” said one of the doctors who treated Daalman.
The images were actually taken about 30 years ago, but they were published for the first time last week in a Dutch medical magazine. The magazine had asked for readers to send in examples of strange medical tales, and a doctor at the hospital sent in Daalman’s story.
Dallman was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder that left her with an urge to eat forks and spoons. She never ate knives, however, and the doctors don’t know why.
She has reportedly made a full recovery and is said to be responding well to the therapy she was receiving for the disorder.
The ingestion of foreign objects, considered a form of self-harm, is a little-discussed type of disorder that is difficult for physicians to diagnose, according to Psychiatry Online .
Duh! Anyway, here is an article from Wired about celebrities and mental illness:
 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.”
While this article is not specifically about BPD, there is some mutilation in it (not self, but of a boyfriend), so it may be triggering to some. Here is long article on it and here is a link to a shorter article with pictures (be warned!).
‘Blackburn woman tattooed lover with Stanley knife’
8:50am Saturday 31st January 2009
A WOMAN used a Stanley knife to carve her name on the shoulder of her lover while he was asleep, a court heard.
Dominique Fisher, 22, of Blackburn, has gone on trial accused of unlawfully wounding Wayne Robinson, with whom she had a drink-and-drug fueled four-day fling after meeting in a nightclub.
As well as her name on his right shoulder, Fisher carved a star on his back and ‘body art’ on his left arm.
Mr Robinson said he woke up covered in blood to find himself cut, with Fisher ‘snoring her head off’ next to him.
Fisher had told him: “I’m a tattooist. I thought you’d like it”, the court heard.
But Fisher denies the charge and has told the jury she carried out the carvings with Mr Fisher’s consent.
The court heard the two had met by chance in the Syndicate nightclub in Blackpool on June 12 then spent a night together in a room at the Cliffs hotel where cocaine was taken before going their separate ways in the morning.
The next day there was further contact between them and Mr Robinson travelled by taxi from his home in Fleetwood to her Blackburn flat.
Steven Wild, prosecuting, said the man stayed with her for two nights and the pair drunk alcohol and took valium, not prescribed to either of them.
He told the court: “What the Crown say happened is that around 2.30am on the Sunday morning Mr Robinson woke and found he was covered in blood.
“He found a design carved into his left arm and the name Dominique into his right shoulder and a star carved into his back.”
Mr Robinson, 24, told the jury at Preston Crown Court that they took around 30 valium tablets between them that weekend.
He said “I watched a bit of telly, laid on the bed, drinking vodka, chatting. That is basically all I can remember.”
He woke up the first morning and she said they had had sex.
Mr Robinson said he presumed that on the Saturday he took more valium.
His last recollection was being “laid on the bed”.
Mr Robinson discovered the tattoos in the early hours of Sunday.
“I had been cut up, there was blood and Dominique was snoring her head off. I had slashes, cuts on my arms and back.”
He refuted defence claims that he had consented to the tattoos, that he had asked her to do it and had mopped up the blood. “I was comatose”, he added.
Mr Robinson’s wounds went onto heal, but has been left with visible scarring, the court heard.
In her evidence, Fisher, who the court was told was a woman of good character, said they sat chatting about the seven tattoos she had then.
She said he asked her to put ‘a tribal one’ on him. She told the jury she had never done it before and did not have a clue how to go about it.
Fisher, of Roebuck Close, in the Galligreaves area, said: “He was asking me questions like had I got anything sterile.
“I said I had Stanley blades because I had been decorating.
“He wanted to put his name into me and I said no. We were both awake, knew what we were doing and talking about.
“He was sat on the end of the bed, baring his arm. Both of us wiped the blood away.
“I was asking him did it hurt. He said ‘no, carry on’.”
It took a few hours to write the name Dominique and then the tribal tattoo.
Fisher said she could not remember doing the star on his back.
She later added in evidence: “I’m sorry for what I have done”.
The trial continues on Monday.
I was a bit disturbed they talked about this as a “fad”:
Self-Mutilating Teens Embed Pins, Needles in Skin
Study Reports a New Form of Self-Injury, but Some Doctors Are Not Surprised
By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit
Dec. 9, 2008—
Some doctors are alarmed by what they see as a growing trend by adolescents to mutilate their bodies through “self-embedding” — inserting shards of wood, glass or paper clips under their skin.
Other medical experts, however, claim the embedding of needles and other objects in the skin is not a new syndrome, but is part of a growing problem of self-injury that is gaining attention.
The grisly debate began last week after a report at the annual Radiological Society of North America conference described “self-embedding syndrome” as a new development. The report cited 10 teens in Ohio who had slipped a sharp object into their skin.
“I was just sitting in class. I was kind of getting the urge to cut, but knew I couldn’t leave class right then,” Allie W., 16, told ABCNews.com in an e-mail interview. Allie, who is not one of the 10 Ohio teens in the Radiological Society report, asked that her full last name not be published for privacy issues.
“I had a safety pin in my purse and sometimes I scratch with that or something similar…like cutting, just less messy and less noticeable,” she said. “So I was going to do that, but for some reason I decided to slide it under my skin.”
At the time, Allie had been cutting for two years. She still self-mutilates, although she has tried to get help and support on cutting support groups online. Allie says she only rarely, and temporarily, embeds safety pins in her skin.
“I don’t think it’s any newer than cutting. To me it just seems like another form of cutting or self-injury,” she wrote. “As for it being a disorder. … I think it depends on if people think self-injury in general is a disorder. I personally don’t think it is because it always stems from something else; it’s more like a symptom.”
Allie said that her symptoms are also an addiction.
Since the report was issued Dec. 3 at the Radiological Society’s meeting, psychiatrists and psychologists who deal with self-injury have challenged that description.
“I know a lot of patients who have done this,” said Wendy Lader, a clinical psychologist, co-founder and clinical director of the Self Abuse Finally Ends, or S.A.F.E. Alternatives in Denton, Texas.
Lader said, “The majority of self-injurers don’t do one form of self-injury.”
From a simple survey of patients at S.A.F.E. Alternatives, Lader estimates at least 5 percent of people she has treated for self-injury have embedded an object under their skin.
Self-Embedding Known, but Rare
“Is it the most common form of self-injury? No,” said Lader. “But, I’m not quite sure why these particular radiologists are discovering this now.”
The Ohio radiologists who presented the “self-embedding” assert they could not find evidence of this behavior anywhere.
“We’ve got a very large children’s hospital, and we had not seen this disorder prior to 2005,” said Dr. William E. Shiels, chief of the department of radiology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Besides a random handful of men piercing their eyes, Shiels said, “The medical literature has not had any reports [of self-embedding], ever.”
“We even talked to our chief of psychiatry, and he talked to his colleagues around the country, and they haven’t heard about this phenomenon,” he said.
Shiels said cases in five other cities in Ohio and several reports in Naperville, Ill., popped up once he and his colleagues announced the self-embedding disorder. “What happens, we believe, is that people are just discarding it as a fluke case,” he said.
Veteran psychiatrists disagree about why self-embedding stayed underneath the radar of so many other medical professions.
Lader suggested embedding may only be one small part of a growing problem of self-injury that has been gaining attention.
“Self-injury in general has definitely increased over the years, and probably in the last five or 10 years it has gone exponential,” Lader said. “We just finished a school manual [for teacher awareness] and we haven’t even fully advertised it yet, but people are clamoring for it.”
Other experts in self-injury and adolescents say that embedding may not turn out to be a lasting trend, but rather one example of how self-destructive behavior moves in fads.
“Embedding things or putting things in one’s body has been a pretty old-fashioned part of self-mutilation,” said Dr. Alexander Obolsky, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Evanston, Ill.
Trends in Self-Destructive Behavior
“It doesn’t strike me as a particularly new thing,” said Obolsky, who has seen young adults embed objects in their genitals or under their skin in his private practice in Chicago.
Nadine Kaslow, professor and chief psychologist at the Emory School Medicine/Grady Hospital in Atlanta, has certainly seen self-embedding, even a generation ago.
“This has been around for a long time. I remember patients doing this in the ’80s,” said Kaslow.
“These things kind of goes in waves,” she said. “There was a wave of anorexia, there was a wave of bulimia. & This may be one of the current trends in self-mutilation.”
Despite doing in-depth interviews with the 10 patients at his hospital, Shiels said he still could not pinpoint how the idea of self-embedding passed from teen to teen.
“Two of them may have spoken with each other because they were in the same group home,” said Shiels. However the other adolescents had no contact with each other, and according to Shiels, all the patients say they did not find the information on the Internet.
According to Kaslow, it’s not necessary for a Web site or a group to directly spread a trend; it just takes some talk of an idea to spread around.
“It’s sort of a contagion factor, kids hear about it, it’s a new idea. & Then there’s a subgroup who finds it appealing,” she said. “Recently it was the choking game.”
While the majority of adolescents may just spread the idea and never self-injure, Kaslow said some susceptible proportion of people who hear the idea will try it.
Dr. Armando Favazza, author of the book “Bodies Under Siege” and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has found evidence of a spontaneous self-embedding trend in early 19th century Europe.
“Back in 1896 psychiatrists compiled medical reports on women [they labeled them all as hysterical] who stuck pins in their bodies,” said Favazza.
Just like Shiels presented Dec. 3, doctors in the 1890s presented X rays of women with needles, sometimes hundreds, embedded in their skin.
“It was a cultural influence that produced these ‘needle girls,’” said Favazza. “There was a lot of fascination with holy men in the Near East & and entertainers.”
Edward Gibson, a popular vaudeville entertainer in the late 1800s, used to ask the audience to push pins into his limbs, hands and feet. Favazza said couple this idea with emotional pain, and some women turned to embedding needles.
Self-Embedding Trends Across History
Whether embedding and self-injury became a trend in the 1890s, or the 1980s or the 2000s, psychiatrists assert that these behaviors are more serious than a fad.
“These are mostly women who have a severe history of childhood abuse, particularly neglect,” said Obolsky.
“What happens to them is the dissociation, it’s a painful state where they may space out for long periods of times,” he said. “To prevent this they may cut themselves, because pain, believe it or not, feels better than the dissociation.”
Favazza’s research indicates the population of self-injurers is 60 percent women, 40 percent men. He found dissociation as a reason, but several other motivations too.
“The most common reason by far, the most common reason is to reduce anxiety,” said Favazza. “Part of it can be to get to get attention, too.”
Kaslow said the self-mutilators could be suffering from a range of situations: troubled families where there’s lots of conflict; adolescents who are struggling with their identity or to fit in school; and abuse.
“It makes you raise the question of abuse, but it’s not necessarily a sure sign of abuse,” said Kaslow.
While Kaslow worries media reports will only make more susceptible teens try self-embedding, Shiels think it may be a better way to get them treatment.
“The big message we gave is this is not a story of despair. Now that we know what it is, we can treat it,” he said.
I am posting this story because in this case the victim of the issue is the person with BPD. Her care giver is charged with neglect of the patient:
Article published Dec 5, 2008
Innocent plea entered by caregiver in case where woman died
By Thatcher Moats Times Argus Staff
BARRE – Julie Davis is accused of doing too little too late to help a vulnerable adult who died while in her care last summer.
Davis, 47, of Calais pleaded innocent in Vermont District Court in Barre Thursday to neglect of a vulnerable adult by a caregiver, which carries a potential penalty of 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Davis was the caregiver responsible for Jean Lemire when Lemire, 45, died last August of hypothermia after being removed from Davis’ Calais home.
Lemire’s core body temperature was 82 degrees when she arrived at Central Vermont Medical Center, and she had multiple bruises, lacerations and a broken rib, court records state. When rescue workers found Lemire, she was soaking wet and had significant bruising on her face and chest, according to Jay Copping of the East Calais rescue squad. Lemire had been eating mud and grass, and Copping told police that he extracted muddy water and grass from Lemire as he attempted to force a tube down her throat.
The court records paint a picture of Lemire as a difficult person to handle, who become more so in the days leading up to her death. Her worsened condition may have been triggered by news of the death of her nephew, who family members said she was close to. Lemire was also scheduled to be moved from Davis’ residence, according to the affidavit, which also may have caused anxiety.
Davis told investigators that Lemire was a self-mutilator who would punch herself in the face and slam her face into the walls. Davis said that in the five days before she died, Lemire refused to sleep and often ran into the woods naked. She also ran over to a neighbors’ house without her clothes on a few days before her death.
On the day of Lemire’s death, Davis said Lemire had been given her morning dose of medication and then spent the majority of the day outside.
However, Davis didn’t call 911 until Lemire collapsed and stopped breathing. Davis had been trying to get Lemire to eat and drink Gatorade, she told investigators, and she performed CPR on Lemire until rescue workers arrived.
Shirley Cichonowicz, a sister and guardian of Lemire, told police that at the hospital the family decided to take Lemire off life support. Lemire died that Aug. 9 at about 10 p.m., according to court records.
Thursday’s proceeding in Vermont District Court in Barre was brief, and Davis was released on conditions. About 15 of Lemire’s family members were in the courthouse, and they filed out of the courtroom after the arraignment but declined to comment.
In an interview with police, Davis’ supervisor and Lemire’s case manager, Karen Daley-Regan, said that Lemire should have been placed in a crisis home based on her behavior in the days before her death.
Daley-Regan said that Lemire’s behavior before her death was uncharacteristic. But she also said that Lemire was known to take her clothes off and had an eating disorder, two of the things that lead to the woman’s death.
On Aug. 5, Daley-Regan prepared a monthly log that indicated no irregular issues with Lemire or Davis, court records state.
But the next day Davis reported that Lemire had gone to a neighbor’s home naked.
Daley-Regan then told Davis that she needed to have her eyes on Lemire at all times, but Daley-Regan did not do a home visit.
Daley-Regan told police that on Aug. 7 she checked in with Davis, who did not say there was an emergency.
Daley-Regan told police that had she known what was going on at the Davis residence, she would have intervened.
Davis told investigators that she tried to communicate what was going on when she talked to Daley-Regan, but also admitted she did not try hard enough. Davis also told police that she knows she should have done more to help Lemire, according to court records.
Communication was not Davis’ strength, according to a former colleague who was the case manager for one of Davis’ previous clients.
Troy Busconi, of the Vermont Crisis Intervention Network at Upper Valley Services, was the case manager for Shawn Leary, whom Davis cared for at one time.
Busconi told police that Davis lacked communication skills, and said he heard about a seizure that Leary had had only long after the incident. And when Davis asked for help, she would “not communicate it directly,” Busconi told investigators.
Davis had a limited skill set, but did the best she could, Busconi told police.
Last May, Adult Protective Services received a complaint that a caregiver was being abusive to her client in a local drugstore. The complainant, Lisa Sargent, took down the license plate number on the vehicle, which was registered to Doug Ballou, who lived with Davis in Calais.
Sargent also told police that the caregiver was referring to the client as “Jean.”
Another caregiver told police that he witnessed Davis scream at Lemire to get her to do things.
It also appears that Lemire was not the first client to die while in the care of Davis. The affidavit is not entirely clear on how much responsibility Davis may have had for the death of a man named Doug Lafrance, who, according to court records, died of pneumonia. But he was in her care when he died, according to the affidavit.
Police pointed out that in the two deaths, Davis did not call 911 until it was too late.
Lemire had been a client of Lincoln Street Inc., a non-profit agency based in Springfield, dedicated to caring for people with developmental disabilities, for 24 years. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, according to the affidavit, and also suffered from anorexia, bulimia, seizure disorder and other conditions.
Lemire required daily doses of a handful of mood stabilizing and anti-depressant drugs.
Davis, who has been a homecare provider for 11 years, began caring for Lemire late last March.
Joan Senecal, the commissioner of the state Department of Aging and Disability, could not be reached for comment yesterday. Cheryl Thrall, the executive director at Lincoln Street declined to comment.
Article about self-embedding….
10:36 AM, December 3, 2008
As many as 20% of adolescents and young adults are believed to intentionally injure themselves, usually by cutting, as a response to emotional pain or trauma. But the number of ways people self-injure seems to be growing, perhaps spurred by Internet communication.
One researcher has identified a new phenomenon he calls “self-embedding disorder.” In a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. Dr. William E. Shiels II says he has removed such items as unfolded paper clips, wood slivers, metal staples, needles, pencil lead and stones from the arms or legs of teenagers. An expert in extracting foreign objects from the body, Shiels described 19 episodes of self-embedding injury in 10 girls ages 15 to 18 and found some common characteristics. Ninety percent of the girls had self-injured before and most had attempted suicide or had thought about it. Forty percent had a history of sexual abuse. Most had other psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or borderline personality.
Self-injury often takes the form of cutting, burning, biting or hair pulling. However, Shiels warned his colleagues to look for mysterious wounds that don’t heal. Patients rarely admit that they’ve inserted objects into their skin, he says.
“They come in with swelling and say they fell or something,” said Shiels, chief of radiology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in an interview. “I have spoken to doctors at five different hospitals and every one of them has seen this, but they didn’t know what to call it.”
Shiels, who developed an expertise in removing foreign objects from the body while working at military hospitals, said more research is needed on why people self-injure and how to prevent and treat it. Parents and healthcare providers should be aware of the high rates of self-injury and that some children and teens are discussing it on the Internet. In one of his cases, he said, a girl was coached by another teenager through Internet communication on how to insert objects in the skin.
“We need to interrupt this cycle of self-harm,” he said. “But parents often don’t see the behavior evolving . . . Adolescence seems to be increasingly more difficult for some children to handle.”
The Los Angeles Times Health section will present an in-depth look at self-injury later this week online and on Monday in the Health section.
– Shari Roan
Photo: Several pieces of metal grouped near the wrist can be seen on these two views of a teenage girl’s hand. Credit: William E. Shiels II, Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
I stumbled across this article today about the trial of a man who allegedly killed his ex-girlfriend…. I thought some of the wording was interesting. I have marked up this article to show what I found interesting about it.
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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