Users

DO YOU HAVE AN EXPERIENCE OF PERSONALITY DISORDER?

Would you like an opportunity to tell your story? We would love to hear about what it has been like for you, about your diagnosis, your treatment, your recovery, about whatever you want to tell us about. We would love to hear from you because we want to be able to think properly about how the SPDN can best serve people who have a personality disorder, we don't just want to guess, we want it to be informed. Whether your story has a good and happy outcome or shows how difficult you find things then we would like to hear. Sending it to us (through the contact box, by Email or even by post) is not saying you want it published on the website, although you might want a chance to say something in that way. You can send something anonymously or can put your name to it, it can be a couple of sentences or something more substantial.

To give you an idea our service user representative Jay Brownlee gets the ball rolling...

At 16 I pitched up at my GP practice to complain I wasn't sleeping, I guess I was expecting to be given some sleeping tablets and sent on my way but what I got was a prescription for anti-depressants and benzodiazepines and an urgent referral to see an adolescent psychiatrist. I was also told I had to come back at the end of the day because my GP was "worried".

I've often looked back on that day and wondered if it was my first experience of inappropriate treatment, I didn't think I felt that bad when I walked in (don't get me wrong, neither did I feel great) and did my GP overreact and start off a chain of behavior in me that made me, for a long time, making services give me what I felt I needed by behaving in such a way that they had no choice.

When I got to see the psychiatrist we had a chat and I was quickly labeled difficult, it is my opinion that these "difficult" traits I had were actually my borderline personality traits but it would be several years before anyone put this name to what I was dealing with on a daily basis.

Things stayed fairly stuck for a number of years, I tried lots of different medications, psychological treatments and various professionals got involved in trying to help me get better and if I'm honest for many years they did help me to not to get any worse but nothing managed to help me make any progress in life. I was in and out of acute wards and survived from one psychiatrist's appointment to the next.

For all these years I wanted to live so much but I wasn't able to, the things I experienced from day to day were too disabling, I was so stuck where I was I couldn't see any way out of that beyond death, which I tried for lots and lots of times, but I really yearned for life, but a good life full of happiness, contentment and purpose.

Eventually I got what I wanted, it came after nearly 2 years of intensive psychotherapy at the therapeutic community in Aberdeen, I could keep singing the praises of that place for a very long time but I am not under the illusion that it is the only place for people to turn their life around, I am also not even pretending that it will help everyone who goes there but I am so glad I kept going long enough to find the treatment option for me that has meant I have found the life at the other side that was waiting to be found.

Users groups

In September 2006 we heard from Jo Mullen who set up an independent local user group in Moray with the help of Lisa Edwards a Community Mental Health Nurse and the support of NHS Grampian.

Jo Mullen's model appears to be a successful format and at the workshop in Glasgow people were able to sign up if they were interested to advance the work. We are now sponsoring Jo and Lisa to offer workshops to interested groups across Scotland looking at ways that the model might be implemented and evaluated. It is envisaged the SPDN website will have a role keeping the groups in touch with Jo and each other for support and advice.

Questions and answers

We can't offer a live open forum but we are posting up questions that are sent to us and invite replies which will also be posted. This can be on any perspective relating to personality disorder. This section appears under "Views and Reviews".

Information Sharing

If you have read something particularly useful that you would like to share or review then send it to us, and we will feature the information in the "Views and Reviews" section.