Posted by Elizabeth on October 29, 2001, at 10:18:57
In reply to Re: Borderline Personality Disorder Meds » Elizabeth, posted by sar on October 29, 2001, at 0:04:09
Hi there. I'll believe you if you say you were drunk when you wrote this, but I'm responding anyway. :-) (You didn't sound drunk, BTW.)
> true, true! after i saw the movie i read susannah kaysen's book and loved it....particularly because she disputes her BPD dx and didn't even find out about it until years fetr she'd been hospitalised.
Yes. She wrote about it in the epilogue to her book, I think. I read the book before the movie came out, and I was really psyched when I found out they were making a movie of it. The hospital where she was locked up is McLean, a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric teaching hospital about a half-hour drive from where I used to live in Cambridge.
After my parents read the book, they gave me a print of the Vermeer painting from which the book takes its title ("Girl Interrupted at Her Music" - http://www.mystudios.com/vermeer/12/vermeer-girl-interrupted.html). My life has been "interrupted" too (I was diagnosed with depression when I was 14, and it got a lot worse in college).
> and susannah's character in Girl--she wasn't psychotic, was she?
No. BPD isn't a psychotic disorder.
> she certainly didn't seem strange to me...
She'd attempted suicide (or made what is sometimes called a "suicide gesture" -- I was never clear as to why she did it). And back in those days, once you were in the psych hospital you'd often be stuck there for months or even years.
> striking point of the movie....she seemed so disturbed-normal--like a normal teenage girl!!...
I think adolescence should be considered a mental illness. :-)
> that's why my psychoanalyst would not dx me as "borderline," though she said i probably met 5 or 6 of the citeria.
I guess that made you "borderline borderline?" < g >
> she said that life insurance companies have a way of prejudicing (is that a word?) against the mentally ill and especially against "borderlines" because they have a relatve;y high suicide rate...so officially she dx'd me with an "adjustment disoder."
That's probably more accurate for a lot of people diagnosed as "borderline," especially teenagers. One important criterion for BPD that is often ignored, I think, is that the symptoms must have been stable and enduring.
I don't think that people with BPD have such a high suicide rate -- it's probably close to the rate for major depression or bipolar disorder, maybe a little lower. Anyway, don't life insurance policies usually refuse to pay if the death is a suicide?
BPD has a reputation for being hard to treat, and many people with BPD are frequently hospitalized.
I'd expect it to be hard to get health insurance if you have BPD.> have you read the elizabeth wurtzel book?
Prozac Nation? Yes. She actually sounds like she might be borderline, although she only mentions being diagnosed with atypical depression. She's had lots of problems with drug abuse as well, I think.
> for awhile i momentarily thot that perhaps you were wurtzel.
LOL! No, I went to MIT, not Harvard. :-)
> what is your profession?
"Student, on medical leave."
> this guy was so sure that i'm histrionic...i'd *never* thought that of myself, though i'd completely identified with and reconciled with having social anxiety disorder.
Did he give any reason for considering you histrionic? Sometimes the way that we appear to other people is very different from how we feel inside, so it's not impossible that a social phobic could appear histrionic -- but it does seem pretty unlikely!
> this particular pdoc seemed to have a unique argumentative attraction toward me, whcih i was unaccustomed to. i rememebered why i'd always requested females docs. the guy seemed prejudiced in the sense that (and i saw him for months) because my skin is white and eys blue, because i can afford to shop at the mall, because i smell od soap and wear expensive sung;asses i could NOT POSSIBLY have a mental illness, that i should feel oh-so happy lucky and safe in suburbia as opposed to where he grew up OH 50 YEARS AGO ON THE WEST-SIDE, endogenous vs exogenous, of f*** that sh**..."you're privilged, you should be happy..." no, mofo, i come from much sadder...
I can see that. A lot of people don't get how a financially well-off, educated person who had a pretty good childhood could be seriously depressed -- it's a problem I've run into as well.
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:81137
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011025/msgs/82563.html