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Borderline personality disorder review of the literature
Borderline personality disorder review of the literature
Literature on borderline personality disorder
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As we now know, "Girl, Interrupted" revolves around Susanna Kaysen and her personal experience of being put in a hospital and being diagnosed. The memoir also included several other individuals that she grew to know and socialized with over her extended stay at the facility. Though all of these women slept under the same roof, their disorders and conditions where all for the most part very different. The main characters worth noting were Susanna Kaysen, Lisa, Georgina Tuskin, and Daisy Randone. Let us first begin with Susanna. We were capable of seeing signs that she may have a case of borderline personality disorder. First of all, we knew that she attempted to take her life by consuming a bottle of aspirin. BPD is characterized as having frequent uncontrollable actions. Attempted suicide is common amongst BPD patients. She has had several partners in the past but was incapable of maintaining a long term relationship. BPD patients have a hard time maintaining relationships and usually can’t work relationships out. She was quick to get married at the end, showing her desire to find pr...
Denise Gilmartin, a 26 year old female, exhibits behaviors which meet criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder. Denise exhibits unstable intense interpersonal relationships characterized by idealization and devaluation (Criterion 2). She has a history of brief tumultuous relationships and friendships. They start of with quick intense attachments and are described by Denise as “wonderful” and “incredibly special” (idealization); however, these feelings quickly devolve into “contempt” and “loathing” (devaluation). Additionally, Denise displays an unstable sense of self (Criterion 3). Her unsteady employment history is partially explained by dramatic shifts in interests. She switched from marketing to legal work to waitressing. It is also important to note that interpersonal issues underly most of her
(3) The stress from her work is another external factor that may have brought upon the irritability and feeling of not wanting to return to work. According to Thompson, Mata, Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides & Gotlib’s study they state “several factors may contribute to the high levels of instability of negative affect in depressed individuals… that depression status continued to be associated with instability of negative affect even after taking into account average levels of negative affect.”(3) This simply means that a personality variable such as anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear or nervousness can cause suicidal tendencies. Again, they, “… expect that group differences in emotional instability will be fully explained by the frequency or intensity of experienced significant events,”(3) which in Gracie’s case was her Ovarian surgery. Since menopause has previously been reported to cause psychological symptoms, this ovarian failure must be the first suspect. The patient had no pre-existing psychiatric illness preoperatively, but again given a more thorough exam we can provide her with a better clinical
The movie, “Girl Interrupted,”is about a teenage girl named Susanna Kaysen who has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. People with Borderline Personality Disorder “are often emotionally unstable, impulsive, unpredictable, irritable, and anxious. They also are prone to boredom. Their behavior is similar to that of individuals with schizotypal personality disorder but they are not as consistently withdrawn and bizarre” (Santrock, 2003). In “Girl Interrupted” Susanna Kaysen the main character, goes through many episodes that give a picture of the disorder she’s suffering from. The first such incident occurs when the psychiatrist is talks to Susanna about her failed suicide attempt. During the conversation, she is seen as confused and irritated by his presence. While the psychiatrist questions her, her mind seems to be somewhere else because she is having flash backs of her past, maybe a sign of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Susanna seems to be uncertain about things, she claims that she does not know what she feels. She was taken to the hospital after she tried to commit suicide, she took a bottle of aspirin. Her reason for taking the full bottle of aspirin was major headache, which was also alarming to the psychiatrist.
Provide adequate lighting for the client, make sure the client is comfortable and provide light snacks. The psychiatrists at the hospital diagnosed Susanna with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), diagnostic code 301.83. The enduring patterns for BPD were distinct impulsivity, instability of interpersonal relationships, self image and affects. There are nine criteria’s and Susanna has to identify with five of them to fit the diagnostic criteria for BPD and it has to begin in early childhood in different context. Susanna was above eighteen years of age when she was diagnosed and the movie did not give details on the onset for the disorder. My rational for assigning this diagnosis are as follow: Criterion 1) frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment; when Lisa, who was her sociopath friend in the movie, was moved to a different ward after she drugged a nurse when she tried to escape; Susanna had a hissy fit with the staffs screaming and demanding to know where her friend was located. She was so worried and viewed her friend as “all that she had left”. Susanna looked like she was having a mental break down because of fear of losing Lisa. Criterion 2) pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation; Susanna idealizes her friend Liza’s
The term Echo Personality Disorder was coined by British Psychosynthesis practitioner Patrick Hurst, as a replacement term for 'Inverted Narcissism' and 'Covert Narcissism' which later terms place unwarranted emphasis on narcissistic qualities of the personality, which in many of these individuals may not be a feature at all.
There are multiple criteria that come into play when determining a psychological disorder. One reason is because, it is hard to know for sure if an action is abnormal or not. Something could be abnormal in our country, but a custom in another.
1. Your uncle consumes a quart of whiskey per day; he has trouble remembering the names of those around him.
According to Varcarolis’s Foundations of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, “Borderline personality disorder is characterized by severe impairments in functioning. The Major feature of this disorder are patterns of marked instability in emotional control or regulation, impulsivity, identity or self-image distortions, unstable mood, and unstable interpersonal relationships.”(Halter, 2014). Susanna demonstrates many of these features. She has few friends, is easily angered, and demonstrates impulsive behavior and poor coping mechanisms. One main coping mechanism that is mentioned many times in the film is Susanna’s promiscuity. This is demonstrated by an affair with a married professor, a sexual encounter with her boyfriend on the unit while in the hospital, and the seduction of a male orderly on the milieu. Self-destructive behaviors are also very common in individuals with Borderline personality disorder. Susanna validates this trait by her lack of motivation, conversations about suicide, and her suicide
In the long run most of the patients prove to be able to live outside
In a country based around free will, the United States contains a vast variety of personalities and behaviors. Plenty of people, probably more than we know, exert abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior is patterns of emotion, thought, and action that are considered pathological. Historically, people blame witchcraft for this eccentric type of behavior and tended to perform exorcisms in hopes of abolishing such actions. Anxiety disorders and personality disorders, two forms of abnormal behavior, can alter a person’s personality as a result of life experiences.
After reading Chapter 1 I was met up with many questions: why are we afraid of those with mental disorders? Who told us that to be different was a disease? How did we decide that this reality was the right way so many years ago? How does our timeline with mental illness jump from humane compassion to rotting cells of people being mistreated? How can we continue to ignore the homeless problem in the world today and deny that we can help those who are suffering? As an idealist, I found the chapter both eye opening and stomach jerking. Especially after watching the videos on lobotomy’s I questioned who the hell gave that guy an ice pick! It was interesting to watch the timeline of mental disorders go from spirits who were needing to be
M.K is a woman who has been experiencing a gap in memory and being unable to recall what she does during in these gaps. There is no reported drug use or alcohol abuse, she undergone extensive medical evaluations and there was nothing found. She has been having social and occupational distress, she is described as having “erratic” and “unexpected” behavior at work or in social situations but cannot recall the behavior. There was a history of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather as a child.
Girl Interrupted is a movie focusing on the mental disorders of certain women. The main character is Susanna who was taken to an institution by her parents, however was coerced into signing herself in. During the therapy sessions she stated that she did not wish to commit suicide, however the therapist disagreed with her. He prescribed her medication without telling her about it, and she was unable
Some symptoms of BPD can include fear of abandonment (1), unstable relationships (2), self-harm (3), and destructive behavior (4). In one scene in the middle of the movie, Rowe gets sent to a different ward for drugging a nurse. (1) Kaysen causes a huge scene and demands to know where Rowe is. Kaysen is so distraught because she claims that Rowe is “All she has left.” Kaysen seems to have a lot of people come and go throughout her life. (2) In one part Kaysen states “I just don’t want to end up like my mother.” This could mean that Kaysen and her mother don’t share the greatest bond. As seen throughout the movie, there is a bandage on the wrist of Kaysen (3) suggesting that she might have cut her wrists when she had a “headache.” Kaysen having destructive behaviors, as mentioned before is an indicator of BPD. (4) In the early movie, it shows how promiscuous she could be. She had a one-time affair with a married college professor who wanted more than she did. She also had an on and off relationship with a boy named Toby who was later drafted in the military, but decided to run away and take Kaysen with him. But, she declined because she didn’t want to leave
People with this disorder tend to display “great instability, including major shifts in mood, an unstable self-image, and impulsivity” (Comer, 2014, p. 413). The term “borderline” was coined by psychoanalyst Adolf Stern in 1938 under the assumption that this condition resided on the border between neurosis and psychosis. The text also describes those with borderline personality disorder as being prone to bouts of anger and violent emotional reactions, however it can be suggested that the reason Lux does not portray this emotional reactivity is partially due to how she was raised. The strictness and control the Lisbon parents reinforced could have very well instilled in their daughters the notion that they are to do and act as they are told and to behave in a calm, polite, lady-like manner. This could explain why all five sisters seem to be shy and quiet, and even wild-child Lux has her moments of conservative propriety. In an article by Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz in Scientific American Mind, it is said that people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are “often regarded as hopeless individuals, destined for a life of emotional misery” (2012). Because of this stigma, many individuals do not fit the stereotypical mold of someone with BPD. Other films such as Fatal Attraction (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) further shape the misconception that individuals suffering from BPD are violent and bizarre. While Lux does not bang her head against the wall out of anger or scream at her parents over the smallest infraction against her, she does at times portray other signs of BPD. Impulsivity and self-destructiveness can be seen as Lux partakes in risky behaviors such as drinking, smoking marijuana and cigarettes, and unsafe sex with different partners (Comer, 2014, p. 414). These behaviors of