Would you rather be autistic or have BPD?

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Well that is not the picture I got when I was taking abnormal psychology and we discussed personality disorders.....in the psychology feild it is hardly treated as a junk catagory where people are dumped and considered untreatable. Its just very difficult to treat a lot of personality disorders and they aren't usually curable that is not to say there is not therapy or treatments that help. But yeah the way personality disorders where presented in that class seemed quite valid.

That is hardly what I was trying to say.......I was only saying personality disorders are hard to treat and even more difficult to cure, kind of like autism. Last I checked autism is not curable and a lot of times people with it get offended when people suggest there should be a cure. Though Autism is usually how people are born and personality disorders develop later on but as a rule the personality disorder becomes just as much a part of a person as autism does from my understanding.

I didn't say it was a behavioral disorder, but it very much impacts behavior. My point is that it's in the framing. If you describe something as working a particular way, it will be perceived as working in that particular way until that framing is questioned, challenged, and debunked. In BPD, impulsiveness is a personality trait that leads to self-destructive behavior, whereas in ADHD, impulsiveness is not a part of your personality but an element of your neurology that makes it very easy to do something without consciously deciding to do so. Often, that something is self-destructive.



Here's a paper on BPD specifically that critiques how clients diagnosed with BPD are treated by professionals:

http://www.psybc.com/pdfs/library/What_ ... Anyway.pdf

That certainly doesn't seem to describe people who largely respect and want to help people who have BPD.

Here's an article on psychopathy:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 120711.php

And I recently had a discussion with a psychiatrist - a professional who's been a professional for decades - who outright described patients diagnosed with particular personality disorders as "evil."

Also, as one person who is studying to become a therapist told me, a personality disorder diagnosis can be a therapeutic death sentence. Just having one can mean being characterized as non-compliant automatically, whatever one's behavior, and can make it difficult to receive treatment. They can mean (as with autism, and many other things) not being able to get insurance because of preexisting conditions. Having one of these diagnoses can very well mean being marginalized badly in terms of medical and mental health care.



The difference being is that unlike autism that the framework that personality disorders exist under was largely established in Freud's time and hasn't really improved in terms of understanding. I am not arguing whether they should or should not be cured, but that treatment is possible, and that finding more useful treatment modalities doesn't seem to be much of a priority.

Alright well it would seem we are on the same page about ADHD than. Also some of the issues with how people with this disorder are treated was brought up in the class and not as a good thing to support. The professor teaching the class was actually quite open about some of the issues in the psychology feild.......such as stigma related to certain disorders like BPD. So there certainly are issues like that, but they don't reflect the opinions of everyone in the psychology feild. But other then that a lot of times people with personality disorders do not seek treatment for the personality disorder if they do seek treatment its usually for a comorbid disorder.....so that also makes it hard to treat and I imagine psychiatrists and psychologists with the attitude that people with a personality disorder are 'evil' or cannot be helped probably does not help either.

Also I am not so sure personality disorders have anything to do with Freud, but I will look into that I guess.....I just was not aware they had gotten that far during his time. But you are right there is treatment that can help, but maybe none that can cure.

I didn't mean Freud did the personality disorder stuff (he did some, I think) and the framework has been pretty static and is fairly old.

And I'm glad to hear your instructor said those things.

My mom is BPD. BPD was one of many things I was diagnosed with on my way to AS. I'd be good with neither.

well i'd rather not have a mental handicap at all, but i've never heard bpd associated with me ever, just AS.

heck never heard of bpd till i came here, i thought it meant bipolar disorder, and one of my aunts has that. so i could possibly have a touch of bipolar.

but i know i have no choice in who i am so i accept it the best i can.

i used to hate mental illness back when i was young but i think finding out i was one myself has given me an understanding of why hating someone because of how they were born is wrong. so i guess being diagnosed opened my eyes in a way.

sorry if i seem offensive, not trying to be, i have a hard time wording things at times. ^^;