In this video, I'm going to tell you about the best treatment for Borderline Personality
Disorder, or BPD. So, the main treatment for BPD is psychotherapy.
Medication can be added in, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about that later, but
we're going to start with looking at the psychotherapies. So, the goals of psychotherapy should be to
help you to improve or manage your emotions on a day-to-day basis (so, to introduce a
little bit more stability into your day); to help you to reduce any impulsive behaviours;
to improve your relationships; and also to identify those factors that have made you
vulnerable to developing BPD in the first place, so that any changes that you make actually
last. Okay, in addition to this, psychotherapy should
help you to address those problems that might be occurring alongside your BPD—so, things
like depression, anxiety, or substance misuse. There are four main psychotherapies that have
been shown to be effective for BPD, and I'm going to make some other videos and go into
more detail for each of these treatments. But, for now, I'll give you a brief overview
of each one. Okay, so, the first one is something called
'Dialectical Behavioural Therapy', or DBT, and this teaches you to manage your emotions,
it teaches you to tolerate distress better, and it also helps you to improve your relationships.
The second type of psychotherapy is something called 'Schema-Focused Therapy'. Now, this
helps you to identify the unmet needs that are leading to those negative patterns you're
seeing on a day-to-day basis. And these are often things that, in childhood, helped you
to survive, but now, as an adult, are quite harmful. This therapy also helps you to get
those needs met in a healthy way—so, starting to promote some really positive life patterns.
The third type of psychotherapy is something called 'Mentalisation Based Therapy', and
this helps you to identify the thoughts and feelings that you're having at any given moment,
and helps you to develop an alternate perspective,
and it's very much about thinking before you react.
The fourth type of psychotherapy is something
called 'Psychodynamic Psychotherapy', and this helps you to understand your emotions
and your interpersonal difficulties through the relationship that you develop with your
therapist, and then you take those insights, and you apply them to your everyday life.
The fifth type of therapy is one that is offered in conjunction with one of those other four,
and it's called 'Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving'. And it's
basically a 20-week programme where you get together with the people that are important
in your life—friends and family—and you work on strategies to help you to manage those
difficulties that are coming up between you on a day-to-day basis.
Okay, a little bit about medication. So, there's not a specific medication for BPD, but you
may be prescribed something to help with those problems that co-occur with BPD—so, things
like anxiety, depression, irritability, anger—so, you might be prescribed an antidepressant,
an antipsychotic, or a mood stabiliser. Okay, so, from time to time, the other thing
to bear in mind, if you have BPD, is that you might need to spend a bit of time
in hospital, just to help you to re-stabilise—particularly if you struggle with self-harming behaviours
or thoughts of suicide. Final thought: BPD is a really complex problem,
so recovering from it is going to take time.
However, with the right treatment, recovery is absolutely possible.
I hope this was helpful. Thank you for watching.
And I will see you soon.