What is “Good Psychiatric Management” of People With BPD?

A mockery of everyone with severe childhood trauma

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During the past week our occupational therapist and I made some house calls together and we met with two of our “participants.” The idea behind calling them participants is that we will stop seeing them as patients — but only changing our language and not what we do, is of course not resulting in anyone being more of a participant in their own care.

Both “participants” have lived lives full of trauma, from childhood and onwards. They have coped with this somewhat differently from each other, but both now have multiple psychiatric diagnoses telling them that they have congenital deficits in their brains and that they were born with a so-called “vulnerability.” They both have diagnoses that say nothing or very little about what kind of lives they have lived so far.

These “participants” are just two people of all the ones I meet in my job. Every “participant” I meet has experienced trauma — so much trauma I am often surprised that they still are standing, able to think, feel, or even just exist. They are all, in the true meaning of the word, survivors. And now they also must survive the “care” they are receiving, and in many cases have received for years, sometimes even decades.