Personality Disorder
Welcome to Personality Disorder.
Our Programme Lead is Alison Longwill.
Personality Disorder as a concept continues to pose a range of questions and issues for people, carers, and family members. Challenges undoubtedly exist too for mental health services in appropriately meeting the needs of people with personality disorder. However, some significant progress has been made in recent years in terms of both the understanding of people with personality disorders and in the development and delivery of effective interventions to support recovery.
'Personality' can be viewed as being formed by our own life experience of thoughts, behaviours and beliefs, influenced by our genetic make up. Generally, personality develops and changes over time as we adapt to different situations.
People who may have a personality disorder are often characterised through thoughts and behaviours, e.g. alienation and loneliness, difficulties in maintaining relationships, low self-esteem, repeating unhelpful patterns of behaviour, being uncertain who they are, difficulty in controlling impulses, self-harming, using drugs or alcohol unhelpfully, etc.
For people with a personality disorder these feelings are often deep-rooted and long lasting, usually developing in childhood and adolescence and impacting on many aspects of their life.
Psychiatric diagnoses suggest there are as many as eleven different types of personality disorder. However there continues to be a debate as to whether the label is helpful and whether the description of 'people with complex needs' is more appropriate and accurate.
People with a personality disorder may benefit from a range of different approaches:-
- talking therapies;
- group therapy;
- developing and improving life skills e.g. programmes to assist with tolerating distress, coping with anger or anxiety, good supportive relationships with a friend, relative or key worker;
- setting and achieving life goals such as taking up a new interest, completing an educational course, gaining new employment;
- taking better care of physical health, getting regular exercise, improving patterns of sleeping and eating, can help with feelings of anxiety and low mood;
- Medication can also assist with symptoms.
Sue Imlack has been employed by CSIP to assist with the development of a regional service user network and Sue will be contacting and visiting localities to assist with the development of the service user voice.
For any further information please contact alison.longwill@csip.org.uk or sue.imlack@csip.org.uk in relation to service user network issues.
For more information Personality Disorder please visit West Midlands Personality Disorder Service User Network