There’s a mental health diagnosis that’s applied three times more often to women than men. That should give you pause for thought alone. But then, add to that the fact it may be diagnosed after only a brief encounter (not a full assessment) by a clinician who has never met you before; at the point when treatment for some other diagnosis is deemed to have "failed" for example when you don’t recover quickly from depression or an eating disorder; when you are told you are "not engaging" (even though the therapist has responsibility to engage you too).
Or maybe you are deemed "unsuitable for this service", or "too difficult to manage" because you are harming yourself. What is this diagnosis? It’s Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), sometimes known as Emotionally Unstable. According to the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association) people with BPD have a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image and affect (mood), in addition to marked impulsivity and "self-injurious behaviour".
You need five out of nine different symptoms to get the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder but if you are female and self-harm the sad truth is that you may be lucky to get a different one. It’s a sticky diagnosis too. It can stay with you for decades and colour the way that every other health professional in your life behaves towards you.
We do know from research that for people who have these kinds of psycho.
