Within about six months of being in post at the rape centre, I noticed a worrying trend.
“Jess, my client has just been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder…” became a common conversation starter from my team. First it was one or two, then it was a handful, then it was ten, then it was thirty.
As I had responsibility for all face to face and telephone counselling and supervised every counsellor and psychotherapist in the centre, I was able to carefully analyse hundreds, maybe over a thousand cases of sexual abuse and rape that we held and realised that almost all of the women and girls referred into mental health teams in the NHS were quickly diagnosed with BPD and medicated. I specifically say ‘women and girls’ because in the rape centre I worked in, I saw very few men and teenage boys with a BPD diagnosis despite them experiencing very similar histories and emotional responses.
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