Day 15:

Treatments:

There are various treatments for BPD but effective treatments can be hard to access. There are usually long waiting lists and of course, no guarantee that it will work. This is not a complete list and what works for one person may not be suitable for another.

Many BPD patients are treated by a Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). This is a team of people who provide day-to-day care. You may be seen by the whole team or one or two members according to your mental health problems.

You may be entered into something called a Care Programme Approach (CPA). This means that you have regular contact with a care coordinator. They will work with you to write a care plan. This service is for people with severe mental illness including personality disorder.

There are various different therapies: Psychotherapy, DBT, CBT and MBT.

DBT is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and was designed to treat BPD. The goal is to make you accept your emotions as valid and acceptable. The dialectic part says it is important to be open to ideas and opinions that contradict your own. DBT uses a lot of mindfulness techniques. Mindfulness is all about paying attention to your breathing and to focus on your thoughts and emotions in the present moment.

CBT is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and helps to change core beliefs and behaviours that underlie inaccurate perceptions of yourself and others.

MBT is Mentalisation-based Therapy. Mentalising is basically being able to think about thinking. To step back from your thoughts about yourself and others and look at them to see if they are valid.

Then there are Therapeutic Communities. This is a structured or "planned" environment where a group of people with long-term mental illness come together to interact and take part in therapy. The idea is to learn skills needed to interact with others.

Tomorrow I will say a few things about my experience of therapy...