BPD diagnosis being used by hospital to deny treatment.

I appreciate the good work you are doing BlueButterfly, and I am glad the standard treatment worked for you. However, with my daughter we have a case that in some respects mimics BPD, and in others does not, so that three American hospitals came up with a completely different diagnosis. At the very least, in my opinion, she has co-occurring mental illness (see p131 of your document).

We have continued to have the same problem with the hospital - namely the complete lack of crisis care and the irrational belief by a whole group of medical professionals that it is somehow better for an ill person out of their mind to wander the streets or to be gaoled, than to be in hospital with medical professionals.

On the positive side, they eventually obtained Special Benefit for our daughter and she became eligible for crisis accommodation while having standard BPD treatment. However a few weeks ago she started saying she "wanted to get away from all this psych bullshit and get a job". Within a couple of days she entered mild manic phase, and from that point on - althoiugh she has several case workers - no-one has ever been able to arrest her path to complete psychosis. The crisis place tried to get the CAT team to come and the hospital to take her, and ended up makling a formal complaint. The hospital put her out on the streets as usual, and for four days, we think, she cruised the train system from one end to the other without sleep, ringing us and leaving strange messages from widely separated stations. We think the police picked her up at least once. Anyway some angel must look after the mentally ill, because she is still with us and as always, came down to normality faster than she went up.

It's hard to say where she will go from here, because it seems to me this BPD treatment is useless and she is deteriorating. I suppose eventually she will die or she will manifest such obvious symptoms of standard psychosis that they will have to change the diagnosis. Or maybe they will actually get somewhere. But it is all a very high risk approach on behalf of the hospital, none of the other agencies will tolerate having acutely mentally ill people on the premisis and the public are absolutely opposed, frightened even.

Sorry Butterfly, I did look at the document you provided and it seemed to me that all it did was reinforce the hospital's position, BPD sufferers are not ill, they are attention seekers who go to hospital to get attention and they dont belong there. They should be given only the briefest of treatments and "crisis stabilisation" is not a goal. They should be "involved in their own treatment". All this is just laughable when we are talking about someone who in crisis cannot recognise anyone, cannot respond to simple commands and has little more intelligence than a wild animal.

Hi Joe Flood, I did not know you were in the USA. I am sorry to hear about your daughter. It sounds like she has a co-existing disorder as well as BPD. The guidelines I sent you are tailored from Australia. I did not get the same sense that you did though. My understanding from the document is that people with BPD are entitled to crisis treatment rather than being shunned from hospitals.

Have you heard of an organisation called NEA-BPD? Their web address is www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com

They do a 12 week programme for parents of people with BPD called Family Connections. They could help you connect with services for your daughter as well as provide information, skills, education and support for yourself. They have Family Connections in most states.

I am working hard in Australia to try to create consumer and carer support groups and more DBT programmes as well as crisis and respite residential establishments. I spent a lot of my free time advocating and educating professional people and campaigning politicians to create more services and to get the message across that with the right treatment, services, programmes, support and help that BPD is a treatable and recoverable illness, but first we have to put more resources and money into this. I am so sorry I don't have any answers here for you. I wish you and your daughter all the best.

Hi all,

I just thought I'd quickly chime in here to ask @joeflood where are you from? I saw in your post that you mentioned accessing a CAT Team so I assumed that had moved to Australia as I thought there was a different name these types of services in States.

If you are from the US, I just need to let you know (as @ButterflyGirl has) that this is an Australian service, which means that most of the material, information and referrals provided on here will be Australian based so it may differ to services and treatments in the US. You're welcome to participate in the Forums though!

See previous posts. It has all been happening in Melbourne.

See the previous posts for history. It has all been happening in Melbourne.

In the US - "right" diagnosis of manic depressive, few problems. In Australia - "wrong" diagnosis of BPD, endless problems.

After six months of this we've largely exhausted the possibilities and pretty much given up. Our daughter is fully integrated into the BPD system now. She will have to take her chances and we can only hope she survives. If she does not - prepare for a five million dollar law suit, these psychiatrists seem to have no conception of the danger they are in.

The Mental Health Commissioner finally agreed to accept our complaint but they have been completely useless. Second opinions have been done a long time back, more cronies even worse and more arrogant than the first lot. As I've said, this whole BPD thing seems to be a mass delusion of the Australian psychiatric profession, to be applied to any young woman 18-25 who vaguely meets some of the criteria.

Yes she has a different issue, she is, as she says herself, mad (or sporadically acute psychotic, if you prefer). Yes like many sufferers of different mental ilnesses she could just as easily be diagnosed with trauma or substance abuse and they are presumably treating her for these as they are part of the BPD lexicon. However I have no doubt at all, and neither does anyone else in the family, that her fundamental problem is organic and chemical, and the rest is just noise.

I'm almost entirely out of the loop now as I have no formal responsibility for my stepdaughter apart from having brought her to Australia. The professionals have taken over, with some light monitoring from her mum. However this whole episode has reinforced my opinion that psychiatry is not much better than quackery.

Hi everyone,

I was just reading through this post as it relates to bpd which my sibling has and a question was raised about emergency/crisis beds in Victoria.

Yes, I know that Dandenong Hospital and Maroondah hospital usually have beds available for this emergency type of care. Especially if the person is brought in by the police or under a doctor or CAT teams recommendation.

My sibling has been in and out of Maroondah psych ward on numerous occasions.

Hope that helps.

Hi Shieno

So sorry to hear about your daughter, she had a terrible experience, Every case is different, the only unifying factor is having our children desperately wandering the streets or being jailed.Our daughter is not a self harmer but she does have extreme psychotic events of short duration.

An arrangement was made to put her in hospital over the Christmas break, since she was deteriorating and everyone was going on holiday. Despite this the hospital threw her out at 1am on Christmas morning. Her crisis bed had been taken so she lay in front of the accommodation until the police picked her up and took her to a hotel. Her mother came and got her and was busy negotiating at the Crisis Centre on Grey St when the police turned up to charge her, with a concocted story. We couldn't see her and found her two days later in a cell in Central Lockup, naked, injured, covered in urine and menstrual blood, and unable to speak to anyone. The police opposed bail but we eventually got her out. Quite a Christmas.

She is here despite the landlord threat of a $20 000 fine. Her mother is trying to talk her through a whole attack for the first time. This involves being on her case 24/7 while she does bizarre things, keeping her in earplugs so that noise such as talk or traffic does not startle her, and stopping her going into panic every few minutes. I cannot go into the room with her. This is extremely wearing and would not be possible if her young sister was here,

Three days later she is looking slightly better. If it works it will be the first time ever that she has avoided full psychosis after beginning a cycle. However this approach is too intensive for practical purposes. As we are moving we will try another hospital, hopefully under the care of a new specialist I have had contact with in the past. If necessary we will use the MP. I have given up on the Commissioner - they called a meeting and did not even turn up as they were "uncertain of their powers".