This article explains Marsha Linehans view on what are the causes of Borderline Personality Disorder.
It was taken from Source: Linehan, Marsha M. Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder, New York: The Guilford Press, 1993.
http://borderline-personality.suite101.com/article.cfm/causes_of_borderline_personality_disorder_bpd
I have been diagnosed with BPD and have experienced the reasons why Marsha Linehan invested her time and energies into researching a comprehensive treatment for those suffering with BPD.
"Much controversy surrounds the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). In some circles, it is considered to be the most overdiagnosed condition in the DSM-IV, a label that gets attached to the clients who do not get well, whose problems seem intractable and whose relationships with their therapists are full of conflict and negative feelings at both ends. Many social workers and psychologists refuse to treat clients who have been diagnosed with BPD. One of the more renowned psychologists who do not, who actually welcome borderlines in clinical practice, is Dr. Marsha Linehan. Dr. Linehan has developed a comprehensive model of BPD that includes a possible etiology for the condition, a persuasive argument for why its sufferers become so entrenched in their behavioral patterns, and a suggested treatment approach. She chose to call this model Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT, and its practitioners have been greeted with success where so many others have failed."
An overview of DBT is detailed on this site;
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/linehan_dbt.html
I am now under-going DBT treatment (which she developed) and on the whole it has helped me control my behaviours. However throughout my treatment I have criticised the fact that it does not deal with the root causes of my problems, and has not stopped me from having the urges to engage in harmful behaviours however has helped stop me from indulging in them. However I do recognise that when I started the treatment I was informed that the treatment was not about resolving the underlying issues but to deal with the present and to teach me skills to cope. Hence part of the treatment is called "skills training". What I do like about it is that I am allowed to call my therapist on a mobile between the hours of nine am to seven pm because the treatment I am undertaking understands that most crisis' do not happen in the groups or in your therapy session but in real life, (however times vary from therapist to therapist within the group because Marsha states that the therapist must also take into account how much they can also reasonably cope with).
This has been an invaluable aspect of the treatment for me, and now i am towards the end I hardly ever, if at all call, because now I am able to imagine what the therapist may say, and use the resources made available to me in the training to cope.
However although some people seem to appear to need no further treatment, I do think that it is the responsibility of the therapist/mental health workers involved in your treatment to seek out further therapy that deals with the underlying/root causes of your problems when DBT finishes. Marsha Linehan states that DBT is to help the client/patient to learn skills to prevent them from engaging in parasuicidal behaviors or ambiguity that could have a negative impact on deep going therapy. Because she states that, I get the feeling that she does believe that the underlying problem should not be ignored at a later stage. I am worried that an under-funded/poorly run health authority, may see someone who is no longer engaging in damaging behaviours as "cured" and therefore leave them living what I would deem a tortuous life of merely COPING with their impulses rather than CURING them.
If you have heard of/been in DBT or other treatments for borderline I would be most interested in your point of view.
