Borderline Personality Disorder - A Diagnosis Of Invalidation

[Published 26 September 2016 on Huffington Post, by Jay Watts]

For the label of 'BPD' shuts down our humane response. It allows staff to think and act through the kind of awful language lens used about Helen - to 'other'. Language, especially powerful language around diagnosis, can be dangerous.

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Note from PDV!: Read about Helen's tragic situation [here]

Read more about how personality disorders and BPD in particular provides clinicians a way of othering people in order to resolve internal conflicts of ethics and responsibility and to justify moral judgement of patients:

• Brokering Authenticity: Borderline Personality Disorder and the Ethics of Care in an American Eating Disorder Clinic

• What is manipulative behavior, anyway?

• Team splitting and the ‘borderline personality’: a relational reframe

• Working around a contested diagnosis: Borderline personality disorder in adolescence