A Real Affliction: BPD, Culture, and Stigma is an interview podcast that explores how we live with, treat, advocate for, write about, and conceptualize borderline personality disorder, as well as common co-occurring challenges like complex PTSD, eating disorders, and substance use disorder, all of which I’ve experienced. My guests and I will also discuss how literature, film, television, photography, dance, philosophy, the history of medicine, feminist and disability studies, nature, and bioethics reflect, illuminate, and impact the experience and cultural perceptions of BPD. The podcast’s goal is to increase access to effective, compassionate care.
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Communication strategies for people with BPD and their treatment providers (00:22:26)
How can people with BPD and their clinicians communicate more effectively and compassionately with each other? In this solo episode, I draw on my personal experiences and my study of narrative medicine to offer tips for people on both sides of the doctor-patient encounter, especially during the initial visit and collection of the patient’s history. I explain why self-advocacy is so important, particularly for those who identify as women.
Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness
Maya Dusenbery, Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick
Edvard Munch, The Scream
Columbia University narrative medicine program
University of Toronto narrative-based medicine program
“You can't necessarily compare your trauma to someone else's”: Social worker Samantha Dellosso (00:33:16)
How does the health care system condition how we see our mental health treatment and diagnoses? In this interview—an excerpt from a much longer conversation—I talk with Samantha Dellosso, a social worker, health administrator, and friend of forty years. She and I discuss Medicaid in the U.S., viewing personality disorders along a spectrum, and how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) don’t necessarily determine who we turn out to be.
Alexander Kriss, Borderline: The Biography of a Personality Disorder
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
“You’re talking about me”: Sara from the Bold Beautiful Borderline podcast (00:33:52)
How does BPD impact reproductive choices? In this candid interview, Sara Abbott, the host and producer of the #1 Bold Beautiful Borderline podcast, talks with me about how BPD is affecting her decision to have children. We also discuss intergenerational trauma and the stigma she encountered while getting her Master of Social Work degree.
Trigger warning: This episode discusses suicide.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Still Life: The Posthumously Published Diary of Lara Gilbert (00:26:21)
What can we learn from the posthumously published diary of Lara Gilbert, a young Canadian woman with BPD traits who suffered from complex PTSD in the 1990s? In this episode, I read excerpts from I Might Be Nothing: Journal Writing, a selection of writings from the 3200-page diary of Lara Gilbert, which I read in the archives of the University of Victoria. Lara was a brilliant and talented writer, and I wanted some of her words to be heard. While her story is tragic, her experience is a reminder that life is always hard, no matter which era you live in, but we have far more treatment options for BPD and complex PTSD than we did 30 years ago. It is also a reminder that our words live on.
This episode concludes the first year of the podcast.
Trigger warning: This episode talks about CSA, rape, and suicide.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Jennifer Douglas et al., “‘Treat Them with the Reverence of Archivists’: Records Work, Grief Work, and Relationship Work in the Archives”
Lara Gilbert, I Might Be Nothing: Journal Writings
Cynthia Gralla, “Boxed Memories,” Room, Vol. 46, No. 3 (“Ghosts” issue), September 2023
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu, The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu
Bea Tusiani, Pamela Tusiani, and Paula Tusiani-Eng, Remnants of a Life on Paper: A Mother and Daughter’s Struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder
"I learn about resilience from my garden": Solara Goldwynn of Royal Roads University (00:29:00)
What is the relationship between BPD and food security? BPD and food insecurity are prevalent among university students, and research shows that poor diets, both in terms of insufficient calories and an overreliance on ultra-processed foods, fuel mood dysregulation, depression, and suicidality. I believe that most universities could do more to support student food security, food sovereignty in the community, and overall mental well-being through food gardens. In this interview, I’ll be speaking with Solara Goldwynn, the farm and food systems lead for a food-growing initiative at Royal Roads University, which is dedicated to sustainability and partnerships with local Indigenous communities. She also explains how gardening can increase resilience.
Solara’s food garden business: www.hatchetnseed.ca
Community Food Centres Canada: https://cfccanada.ca/en/Home
Diane Ackerman, Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden
Richard Dal Monte, “How Does This Garden Grow . . . Community?” https://www.royalroads.ca/news/how-does-garden-grow-community
Bonnie Kaplan and Julia J. Rucklidge, “Junk Food and the Brain: How Modern Diets Lacking in Micronutrients May Contribute to Angry Rhetoric: https://theconversation.com/junk-food-and-the-brain-how-modern-diets-lacking-in-micronutrients-may-contribute-to-angry-rhetoric-170863
The Maple Leaf Centre for Food Community: https://www.feedopportunity.com/
Nathan Sing, “The Fight to End Hunger on Canadian University Campuses”: https://education.macleans.ca/feature/the-fight-to-end-hunger-on-canadian-university-campuses/
Sue Stuart-Smith, The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature
Prudence Vivarini et al., “Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms in Individuals with Eating Disorder: Association with Severity, Psychological Distress, and Psychosocial Function”
Jan Zwicky, Once Upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination
“We need a society where we don’t step over mentally ill people”: Discussing bioethics with Lucy Yanow (00:31:00)
Why do people living with mental illness, including BPD, need to think about bioethics? Because ordinary citizens can now make life-and-death decisions for themselves and others. As laws and regulations change around issues such as involuntary hospitalization and medical assistance in dying, it’s important for everyone to read and watch lectures about bioethics to protect themselves, but it’s essential for those of us suffering from mental health issues. In this second part of my interview with Lucy Yanow, who studies bioethics, we talk about this issue as well as the ultimate unattainability of bodily autonomy.
Trigger warning: This episode will discuss suicide and euthanasia.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Raven Belasco, editor, Adventures in Bodily Autonomy: Exploring Reproductive Rights in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds
Rosi Braidotti, Posthuman Feminism
Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind
Canada’s 2020 report on the estimated cost benefits of MAID
Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
Chelsea Kamp, “Manitoba Woman Devastated over Delay in MAID for Mental Illness”:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/maid-manitoba-mental-illness-1.7104343
Sophie Lewis, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family
Mallory Moench, “‘A Ticket to Nowhere’: Thousands Are Brought to S.F. Hospitals Involuntarily. Then What Happens?”: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/mental-illness-san-francisco-hospitals-homeless-17772797.php
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Ghostwriting.” Diacritics, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1995.
Complex trauma is in our house now: Courtenay Stallings, author of Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks (00:42:09)
Why is Laura Palmer a heroine for many of us? Because David Lynch's depiction of her in the Twin Peaks franchise was one of the first and remains one of the most powerful depictions of complex trauma from child sexual abuse. In this interview with professor and writer Courtenay Stallings, we talk about her wonderful book, Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks, and how the late, great Lynch catalyzed discussions of the long-neglected topic of abuse -- with which, unfortunately, so many of us with BPD are familiar.
Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.
Courtenay Stalling’s Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak about Twin Peaks: https://www.tuckerdspress.com/product-page/laura-s-ghost
Courtenay Stallings, "Twin Peaks: The Return as Subversive Fairy Tale." Supernatural Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2019, pp. 98-116.
Julian D. Ford and Christine A. Courtois, “Complex PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder”: https://bpded.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40479-021-00155-9
Sigmund Freud’s on the uncanny: https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf
Cynthia Gralla, “A Woman in Trouble: My Life and Illnesses Filtered through Twin Peaks”: https://witness.blackmountaininstitute.org/issues-4-2/spring-2021/
David Lynch, dir., Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and The Return
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
“I thought that mental health problems were something that you caught while young”: Lucy Yanow (00:27:59)
Can recreational drugs be used to treat BPD in controlled environments? In this interview, I talk with Lucy Yanow, who holds a master’s degree in Bioethics and Society and formerly worked as a midwife, doula, and protector of reproductive rights. I ask her about her experience taking ketamine pills for depression and suicidality, but our conversation detours in rich and surprising ways. Lucy opens up about how her family’s history of suicide has affected her. She thoughtfully reflects on intergenerational trauma, the limitations she sees in talk therapy, and weighing the risks of drug therapy against suicidality.
Trigger warning: This episode discusses suicide.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Chittaranjan Andrade, “Ketamine for Depression—Knowns, Unknowns, Possibilities, Barriers, and Opportunities”
Sarah K. Fineberg et al., “A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Ketamine in Borderline Personality Disorder”
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Herland
Thomas Vanicek et al., “Intravenous Esketamine Leads to an Increase in Impulsive and Suicidal Behaviour in a Patient with Recurrent Major Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder”
The book that saves lives: Mishell Baker’s Borderline (00:44:26)
How can an urban fantasy novel save lives? By depicting a protagonist with BPD who is resourceful, loyal, and heroic. In Borderline, the first book in the Arcadia Project trilogy, author and BPD survivor Mishell Baker does just that. In this interview, her perspectives on her books and her life reveal a woman who has found strength and inner peace after agony. As she says to me, “If you die by your own hand, you don't know if your work was done.”
Trigger warning: This episode discusses suicide.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Mishell Baker, Borderline
Mishell Baker, Phantom Pains
Mishell Baker, Imposter Syndrome
Charlaine Harris, The Southern Vampire Mysteries
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Seo-Young J. Chu, Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation
“People with BPD are not a different kind of person”: Dr. Alexander Kriss, author of Borderline (00:42:10)
What can a psychoanalyst learn from patients with BPD? In this interview, Dr. Alexander Kriss, author of the recently published Borderline: Biography of a Personality Disorder, shares insights gained from treating patients with the disorder. We discuss his book, which tells the story of one patient’s recovery while also deconstructing the BPD diagnosis and the broader conceptions of madness and femininity that have created an ever-shifting but ever-present space for people harrying the line between neurosis and psychosis from antiquity to the present day.
Alexander Kriss, Borderline: The Biography of a Personality Disorder
Alexander Kriss, The Gaming Mind: A New Psychology of Videogames and the Power of Play
Link to Alexander Kriss’s New York-based psychotherapy practice
Alicia Elliott, “A Mind Spread Out on the Ground”
Sigmund Freud, A Case of Hysteria (Dora) and Three Case Histories
Edvard Munch, The Scream
“It's Upon Us to Widen That Lens”: Dr. Merri Lisa Johnson, author of Girl in Need of a Tourniquet (00:41:01)
Why should we draw on the field of disability studies to envision, treat, and talk about BPD? In this second and final part of my interview with Professor Lisa Johnson, author of Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality, we explore this question and others, including the connection between BPD and sexuality, why we might diagnose fictional characters with BPD, and the form of her memoir, which “sutured together many types of discourse (medical texts, self-help books, fairy-tale, personal email, autobiographical memory).”
Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet
Merri Lisa Johnson (editor), Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire
Merri Lisa Jonson and Robert McRuer. "Cripistemologies: Introduction."
Merri Lisa Johnson and Robert McRuer, “Cripistemologies Now (More Than Ever!)”
Alyson E. Blanchard et al., “Testing the Hot-Crazy Matrix: Borderline Personality Traits in Attractive Women and Wealthy Low Attractive Men Are Relatively Favoured by the Opposite Sex”
Baby Reindeer TV series
Beyoncé, “Hold Up”
Anne Boyer, The Undying
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Daphne Gottlieb, Final Girl
Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Jonathan Metzel, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
Sarah Redikopp, “Interrogating Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Disorder Through a Feminist Psychiatric Disability Theory Framework”
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
“A Vulnerability Artist Who Fights Ableism”: Dr. Merri Lisa Johnson on BPD (00:47:00)
What does writing from the frontline of BPD look like? If the author is borderline up-ender Dr. Lisa Johnson, it looks and sounds like a witty, raw, and dazzling conflagration. In this interview, she and I discuss her memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality, and share our experiences of navigating academia while being open about our BPD diagnoses.
Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet
Merri Lisa Johnson, “Neuroqueer Feminism: Turning with Tenderness toward Borderline Personality Disorder”
Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces
bell hooks, All About Love and other books
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Marsha Linehan, Building a Life Worth Living
Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"
Nancy Mairs, Remembering the Bone House
José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Stacy Pershall, Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl
Kiera van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Movement therapy for BPD with psychotherapist Ellis Amdur (00:20:44)
Can movement therapy support people with BPD? In this interview, psychotherapist, licensed martial artist, and acclaimed writer Ellis Amdur describes his success with teaching baduanjin qigong, a Chinese breathing and movement system, to a patient suffering from acute BPD.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Links to Ellis Amdur’ books
Cynthia Gralla, “Double Bind: How Borderline Personality Disorder Tied Me in Knots” published by SLICE in their May 2022 Levity online issue
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
“There is no final destination for a human being”: Psychotherapist Ellis Amdur (00:31:25)
How do therapists come to think of BPD after a long career? In this conversation with Ellis Amdur—a retired psychotherapist, award-winning writer, and licensed martial artist—he offers his perspective on BPD, including what a background in Jungian psychology taught him about our singular and ever-evolving journeys. Trigger warning: This episode mentions suicide.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Links to Ellis Amdur’ books
Patricia Barry, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
Reiner Stach, Is That Kafka? 99 Finds
Weird Studies podcast, On James Hillman’s “The Dream and the Underworld”
“He was provoking all these symptoms he had wanted to cure”: Nina Shope, author of Asylum (00:35:00)
How have power dynamics between doctors and patients changed over the past century and a half? In my second and final interview with Nina Shope, author of the award-winning historical novel Asylum, we talk about the complicated relationship between neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his most famous patient as he treated her for hysteria and documented her in photographs during the 1870s. Nina reflects on the photograph of Augustine that she chose to include in her novel, how she avoided flattening historical figures or reducing Augustine to past trauma, and the mythological roots in both the history of female madness and Charcot’s photography.
Nina Shope, Asylum
Nina Shope, “Changeling.” Conjunctions, Vol. 81 (“Numina: The Enchantment Issue), Fall 2023
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
Maud Casey, The City of Incurable Women
Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière
Euripides, The Bacchae
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
Susan Sontag, On Photography
Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho
Emily Wells, A Matter of Appearance
“I was fascinated with showing the things behind hysteria that were being erased”: Nina Shope on Asylum (00:25:45)
What did BPD look like in the 19th century? It looked like hysteria, a phenomenon that puzzled doctors and fascinated the public. In this episode, I interview Nina Shope, author of the award-winning historical novel Asylum, which explores the power dynamics between Jean-Martin Charcot, the father of neurology as we know it today, and his most famous patient. In the shadows of this dynamic, we find symptoms and conceptualizations of female illness familiar to those of us who experience or study BPD today.
Nina Shope, Asylum
Christopher Bollas, Hysteria
Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière
Sarah Shun-lien, Madeleine Is Sleeping
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady
"Insurance companies are breaking the law": Paula Tusiani-Eng of Emotions Matter (00:25:18)
How can we access expensive care? In the US, being diagnosed with BPD is often the first step in an odyssey through a complex and unjust health care system. In the second part of my interview with Paula Tusiani-Eng, co-founder of Emotions Matter, she discusses how to get life-saving coverage from your insurer, the wonderful success of her organization's peer support groups, the wild creativity that many of us with BPD have, and why we need an intersectional approach to treating and supporting BPD.
Resources for this episode:
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Emotions Matter website
Bea Tusiani, Pamela Tusiani, and Paula Tusiani-Eng, Remnants of a Life on Paper: A Mother and Daughter’s Struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder
Frank Yeomans, Paula Tusiani-Eng, and Kellyanne Navarre, “California Approves Law Granting Pretrial Diversion for BPD”
What I wish I’d known about getting a PhD with BPD (00:14:45)
In this solo bonus episode, I talk about what I learned while getting my MA and PhD at Berkeley and offer tips for anyone who wants to pursue a higher education degree while managing their BPD. It can be done!
“How do I meet other people with BPD?”: Paula Tusiani-Eng of Emotions Matter (00:32:11)
What do people with BPD need? When Paula Tusiani-Eng co-founded a BPD non-profit after the tragic loss of her sister Pamela, she realized that we often need more community support. In this interview, Paula tells me about Pamela’s struggle with BPD in the 1990s and how Emotions Matter has built a community for others like her.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources:
Emotions Matter website
Bea Tusiani, Pamela Tusiani, and Paula Tusiani-Eng, Remnants of a Life on Paper: A Mother and Daughter’s Struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder
Evan A. Iliakis et al., “Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: Is Supply Adequate to Meet Public Health Needs?”
“I Love Us”: Melanie Goldman on living with and treating BPD (00:51:13)
How can people with BPD find their voice? In this candid interview, the radiant and loving Melanie Goldman (@mindovermelanie) tells me her story of lived experience with BPD, from the shock of the diagnosis to the joys of advocacy and reclaiming her voice. She also shares wisdom from her training as a registered psychotherapist and her ultimate goal of treating others with BPD.
Is No Longer Human about BPD—and should we even ask that question? (00:25:40)
Can we diagnose the narrator of Osamu Dazai’s novel, No Longer Human, with BPD or some other diagnosis? And does it make sense to try? In this bonus summer solo episode, I give my perspective as a Japanese literature scholar and a person with BPD.
Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”
Shirley Dent, “Don’t ‘Diagnose’ Fictional Characters”
Jared D. Fife, “Stuff Psychologists Like—#1. Diagnosing Fictional Characters”
Edward Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession
Cynthia Gralla, “Suicide Contagion and the Risks of Literature”
Cynthia Gralla, “Dream Girls Gotta Have Agency”
Merri Lisa Johnson, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality
Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs, Heaven, and All the Lovers in the Night
Craig M. Klugman and Carol Levine, “Diagnosing Shosha: Literature As a Lens to View Disease and History”
Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Yukio Mishima, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan
Narrative medicine at Columbia University
“These are like emotional, psychological Trojan horses": American McGee's BPD Rabbit (00:40:44)
Can a stuffed animal help people to cope with BPD? In this episode, I interview American McGee, the celebrated video game designer and mastermind behind the mental health Plushie Dreadfuls line. We talk about his BPD Rabbit, metaphors and stereotypes, the connection between this bunny and the one in American McGee's Alice, the crowd design process, dark humor, and the controversy surrounding the mental health plushies.
Plushie Dreadfuls website
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
George Lakoff on conceptual metaphors
Ronald W. Pies on mental illness as a metaphor
Donald Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects
“Folks with BPD are some of the brightest lights in my life”: Dr. Sara Masland (00:25:15)
Who gets BPD, and are they likely to recover? In this second and final part of my interview with Dr. Sara Masland, she and I discuss the gender distribution for BPD, contemplate the prognosis for people with the disorder based on longitudinal studies (spoiler alert: it’s bright!), and consider what needs to change in medical culture over the next 5 to 10 years. Dr. Masland is a clinical scientist who researches BPD and stigma, a licensed clinical psychologist, an associate professor of psychological science at Pomona College, and an expert in Good Psychiatric Management, a generalist treatment for BPD.
Resources for this episode:
“The BPD diagnosis is an entry point to understanding how you can get on a road to recovery”: Dr. Sara Masland
Jake Camp et al., “Gender- and Sexuality-Minorized Adolescents in DBT: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of Minority-Specific Treatment Targets and Experience”
Sara R. Masland and Hannah E. A. Peeples, “People with BPD Need Compassion Yet Even Clinicians Stigmatise Them”
Sara R. Masland et al., “Destigmatizing Borderline Personality Disorder: A Call to Action for Psychological Science”
Sara R. Masland et al., “Longitudinal Course of Borderline Personality Disorder: What Every Clinician Needs to Know”
Craig Rodriguez-Seijas et al., “Is There a Bias in the Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Patients?”
“The BPD diagnosis is an entry point to understanding how you can get to recovery”: Dr. Sara Masland (00:31:38)
Why do we need a generalist approach to treating BPD? Because there are nearly 6000 treatment-seeking people with BPD to every certified, specialist clinician in the United States. In this episode, Dr. Sara Masland explains how she is helping to simultaneously reduce stigma and increase access to care by training others in Good Psychiatric Management. Dr. Masland is a clinical scientist, licensed clinical psychologist, and professor at Pomona College, whose research explores such topics as BPD, stigma, and epistemic trust.
Trigger warning: This episode mentions suicide.
Resources for this episode:
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Alyson E. Blanchard et al., “Testing the Hot-Crazy Matrix: Borderline Personality Traits in Attractive Women and Wealthy Low Attractive Men Are Relatively Favoured by the Opposite Sex”
Lois W. Choi-Kain et al., “What Works in the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder”
Emotions Matter, “Supporting Students with BPD: A Guide for Educational Professionals, Parents, and Students”
Ellen F. Finch et al., “A Meta-Analysis of Treatment as Usual for Borderline Personality Disorder”
John Gunderson et al., “Good psychiatric management: A Review”
Evan A. Iliakis et al., “Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder: Is Supply Adequate to Meet Public Health Needs?”
Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Sara R. Masland and Hannah E. A. Peeples, “People with BPD Need Compassion Yet Even Clinicians Stigmatise Them”
Sara R. Masland et al., “Destigmatizing Borderline Personality Disorder: A Call to Action for Psychological Science”
Sara R. Masland et al., “Longitudinal Course of Borderline Personality Disorder: What Every Clinician Needs to Know”
“We’re starting young” with fighting stigma: Jessie Shepherd on Millie the Cat (00:17:45)
Why create a children's book about BPD? This is the second half of my interview with Jessie Shepherd, who is a writer, licensed clinical mental health counselor, licensed professional counselor, and director of Blue Clover Therapy. We talk more about her book for children and adults, Millie the Cat Has Borderline Personality Disorder, and muse on the power of children's literature to combat stigma and stir sympathies.
Episode notes:
Jessie Shepherd, Millie the Cat Has Borderline Personality Disorder
The first part of my interview with Jessie
Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection
