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1 in 5 Young Adults Has Personality Disorder, Study Finds
A report from the AP on study: 1 in 5 Young Adults Has Personality Disorder, Study Finds Tuesday , December 02, 2008 AP CHICAGO — Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind. The disorders include problems such as obsessive or compulsive tendencies and anti-social behavior that can sometimes lead to violence. The study also found that fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment. One expert said personality disorders may be overdiagnosed. But others said the results were not…
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The Emotionally Transmitted Disease
Here is an article on CNN that caught my eye. I found it funny because, over a year ago, a friend of mine and I discussed this very topic and he urged me to write a book about it. I started, but ended up with WHINE, because I felt more comfortable talking about BPD. 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…
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David Foster Wallace and Toxic Self-Consciousness
It was extremely sad to see that David Foster Wallace killed himself last month. He was a talented writer and an excellent observer of the human condition. Apparently, he suffered from major depression and had ceased his medications. Really sad. I was reading an article about him in the current issue of Rolling Stone and found a quote that summarizes my attitudes toward people with BPD’s view of themselves. I’m not saying Wallace had BPD – I really don’t know enough about him to say – but this view of oneself encapsulates the deep feeling of shame that accompanies BPD: There’s good self-consciousness, and then there’s toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-Bedouins self-consciousness.…
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NY Times Article that Mentions BPD
NY Times article mentioning BPD. I’d love to comment, but will have to do so later…. October 21, 2008 Mind When All Else Fails, Blaming the Patient Often Comes Next By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D Doctors and psychotherapists generally don’t like it when their patients don’t get better. But the fact is that lots of patients elude our clinical skill and therapeutic cleverness. That’s often when the trouble starts. I met one such patient not long ago, a man in his early 30s, who had suffered from depression since his teenage years. In six years of psychotherapy, he had been given nearly every antidepressant under the sun, but his mood…
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NPD vs. BPD and co-morbidity
I don’t like to quote Sam Vaknin much… for various reasons, but I stumbled on this quote from him about NPD vs. BPD. The reason this came up to begin with is that I was discussing whether certain people in on-line support groups might be dealing with something other than BPD. There are certain support groups in which women make up a large proportion of the group. This confused me a bit, because BPD is much more likely to be diagnosed in women, rather than men. Removing the homosexual female component, there are still more women complaining about their abusive “BPD” men (most often BPxh – which means “Borderline Ex…
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A New Name for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)?
There has been numerous articles and discussion in the therapeutic community about renaming BPD. Here is the text of an interview with Dr. Leland Heller about a new name and about his feelings about the current Borderline Personality Disorder Name (the emphasis in this article is mine): A POSSIBLE NEW NAME FOR BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER Many people would like to change the terminology of the “borderline personality disorder” to a new term that more accurately describes the illness. The term “BPD” in and of itself is as if the whole person (and the personality) is flawed, rather than looking at the BPD as a medical problem it actually is. The…