An inspiring story about recovery from mental illness

[lavenderviolet]

Marsha Linehan is famous among mental health workers for creating DBT, the only treatment that really seems to help people with borderline personality disorder. I thought it was very interesting to read this article about her own past dealing with severe mental illness, and going on to become a functional person:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html

No one knows how many people with severe mental illness live what appear to be normal, successful lives, because such people are not in the habit of announcing themselves. They are too busy juggling responsibilities, paying the bills, studying, raising families — all while weathering gusts of dark emotions or delusions that would quickly overwhelm almost anyone else.

Now, an increasing number of them are risking exposure of their secret, saying that the time is right. The nation’s mental health system is a shambles, they say, criminalizing many patients and warehousing some of the most severe in nursing and group homes where they receive care from workers with minimal qualifications.

Moreover, the enduring stigma of mental illness teaches people with such a diagnosis to think of themselves as victims, snuffing out the one thing that can motivate them to find treatment: hope.

“There’s a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life,” said Elyn R. Saks, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Law who chronicles her own struggles with schizophrenia in “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.” “We who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.”

These include medication (usually), therapy (often), a measure of good luck (always) — and, most of all, the inner strength to manage one’s demons, if not banish them. That strength can come from any number of places, these former patients say: love, forgiveness, faith in God, a lifelong friendship.

But Dr. Linehan’s case shows there is no recipe. She was driven by a mission to rescue people who are chronically suicidal, often as a result of borderline personality disorder, an enigmatic condition characterized in part by self-destructive urges.

“I honestly didn’t realize at the time that I was dealing with myself,” she said. “But I suppose it’s true that I developed a therapy that provides the things I needed for so many years and never got.”

[Alan_Smithee]

My mother sent me a link to that article. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve been an admirer of Marsha Linehan’s work for some time. I find it very inspiring that someone was able to develop a successful, clinically-proven, talk therapy-based treatment for a very debilitating disorder that was recently seen as untreatable (and, in fact, was arguably used at least part of the time as a catch-all bucket diagnosis for “this patient is a bitch and I don’t want to treat her”).

[lavenderviolet]

Yes, it is quite interesting that her experiences gave her the insight to realize what help borderlines need, when borderlines have been notorious for years for being extremely frustrating to treat. I think there are far too many negative stereotypes about mental illness leading only to despair and hopelessness. People do get better - you just dont always know about a successful person’s past struggles with mental illness unless they choose to talk about it.

[QuarkChild]

Have you read Madness by Marya Hornbacher or Loud in the House of Myself by Tracy Pershall? The latter in particular credits her success in coping with Borderline Personality Disorder to DBT. The Hornbacher book is more about bipolar disorder but might still interest you. I read them both recently and really enjoyed them. I am amazed at what people with these mental illnesses have to cope with on a daily basis. And at the same time they have to battle the mental healthcare system in this country, which is a fight in itself.

[Sunspace]

That story was amazing.