Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

The Black and White Thinking of Borderline Personality Disorder

Excerpt from: You, Me, and BPD (click for full article)

 

Yesterday my wife wrote a very good blog titled “The curse of black and white thinking”, where she highlights the issues that black and white thinking causes in her life and some things she has done to help her work through these challenges. I would like to take a look at the other side of this. As a non living with someone that has Borderline Personality Disorder, the issue of black and white thinking comes up quite often. Not really as a topic of discussion, we do have those – that however is for another blog, but as the actual “OMG why can’t you understand what I am trying to tell you” type of issue. People that are not afflicted with these disorders can see that there are many paths one can choose when it comes to making a decision and that there are different levels that we can implement. We can compromise with our decision by looking at the bigger picture and seeing how sometimes doing something you don’t particularly feel comfortable with will allow you to ultimately reach the goal you wanted. With BPD this can be much different.

Thinking Clearly About Personality Disorders

Excerpt from: New York Times (click for full article)

 

This weekend the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association will vote on whether to adopt a new diagnostic system for some of the most serious, and striking, syndromes in medicine: personality disorders.

Personality disorders occupy a troublesome niche in psychiatry. The 10 recognized syndromes are fairly well represented on the self-help shelves of bookstores and include such well-known types as narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, as well as dependent and histrionic personalities.

But when full-blown, the disorders are difficult to characterize and treat, and doctors seldom do careful evaluations, missing or downplaying behavior patterns that underlie problems like depression and anxiety in millions of people.

The new proposal — part of the psychiatric association’s effort of many years to update its influential diagnostic manual — is intended to clarify these diagnoses and better integrate them into clinical practice, to extend and improve treatment. But the effort has run into so much opposition that it will probably be relegated to the back of the manual, if it’s allowed in at all.