Www.pyschiatryisdrivingmemad.oc.uk
To anyone who had received a EUPD (BPD) or any personality disorder diagnosis, I recommend this site.
In common with Wren, I believe the BPD/EUPD diagnosis is BS and unhelpful. Some incredibly brave souls I notice on this site feel their PD diagnosis, along with their autism, is correct. Their candor impresses me enormously. They own it and are battling through. Bravo. I salute you, embrace you and pray you get autism informed therapy and a compassionate response from MH because you deserve it - though I know many do not. The stigma and dismissiveness of the services in relation to a single or co-morbid PD diagnosis has no place in the 21st century.
Others, will find that the PD does not fit although their autism does. Confusing PDs with autism is equally as dangerous. A very high number, especially of women, LGBTQ+ folk and PTSD sufferers, are misdiagnosed, however, before their autism and true nature of their problems is ever seen. Meanwhile, they are often given drugs which are inappropriate and damaging for them and even talking therapies gaslight and compound rather than help them, while the "sticky" and stigmatised PD diagnosis impedes their access to general health care (try being a medical phobe with that one, oh boy!) and appropriate therapeutic approaches.
The depths to which mysogeny, homophobia, racism and cultural prejudice can come to bare on the distinction between the two (genuinely comorbid/misdiagnoses) is frightening.
Personal rant coming, lol!...
I am currently fighting like Hell to clear up my personal diagnostic position. Just as I am all happy that the NAS has set my medical phobias in the proper context of the SPD component of my autism (me diagnoses autistic at 56 - still digesting that! But oooh yeah!), and am ready to forgive MH for missing it for so long, I discover by accident that a BPD diagnosis was on file; made by a shrink who saw me for 5 mins and who NEVER actually discussed my mental health with me, had been on file for two and a half years. And no one in MH or at my GPs told me. I have been sitting there for years - until they put me in the bin - labouring under the impression that my "therapy" was for a medical phobia, while they were trying to correct a PD. No wonder! No wonder, I was damaged more. DBT, that I now realise on mental action replay, they were trying, was asking me to correct a behaviour I did not have, with motives I did not have, based on some god awful emotions I do not have based on a trauma that never existed and blamed me when I did not get better???? What???
I KNOW I do not have a PD. But now I have to prove it in order to get this corrected, so my GPs can understand that a melt down under room 101 type abject terror and a shed load of sensory bombardment and information over load in a medical context is not an attention seeking tantrum. What????
It's costing thousands ££££ to sort out now.
You know what a complaint is in about the specific shrink who did this under the circumstances that he did this. And oh, yes I know the risk that they will take a complaint as more evidence of a PD.
BUT, my siblings on the Spectrum I am doing it anyway. When I have sorted this for me, I will fight for you! All of you. We all need to have a clear an accurate diagnosis - whatever our individual truth may be - and to get the treatment appropriate. If you genuinely have a comorbid PD or whether you've been misdiagnosed with one, your very essence as the Great Spirit's child on this Earth is being trodden on.
Beyond that errr I think a lot of MH services need to grasp what the words "honesty" and "openness" truly mean and stop blaming the patient when they get it wrong!
When I come through this...and I will, I will fight. This community has given me so much. The NAS has given me so much. I do not know whether what I can ever repay is big or small...but I owe the NAS and I owe you all. Big time xxx