Borderline Personality Disorder Book Club

Select favorites...that helped me learn what it was like and what to do.

I am often asked about borderline personality disorder (BPD). Here are the books that I consider the most helpful, as a clinician who has worked with individuals who were suffering. The Frontier Psychiatrists is a daily newsletter! Just did and MBT Training last week:

BPD Books For Patients and Families

The Buddha and the Borderline (audiobook link).

This is a good book (paperback link). My patients say this is relatable. It's a little DBT-heavy because that is what helped her. Keira Van Gelder is the author.

Get Me Out of Here

Another personal memoir— a classic. It's on the longer side but also on the well-written side.

Loving Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder

This is one of the more useful books for helping a family member. Or helping your family members help you.

Frankly, it's a good book generally to learn how to interact with other humans because it explains in extremely sequenced and step-by-step terms what validating is and what invalidating is. This is “the skill” for a less difficult life.

It is written by the person who used to run Behavioral Tech—a.k.a. the intellectual property owner of DBT. It is among the most highly recommended books in the pantheon of health for the family.

Now, after a moment with my adorable family…

BPD Books For Clinicians

The Handbook of Good Psychiatric Management (Amazon)

John Gunderson, M.D., and Paul Links M.D.

I didn't read a lot of books in medical school or residency. Mostly, I stuck with papers. I subsisted on a diet of primary research papers throughout my general psychiatric residency, with few exceptions. This is one of them.

This book is short and clear and should be mandatory reading for anybody managing the care of patients with psychiatric illness, not just physicians. This is a great book for therapists. This is a great book for doctors. This is a great book.

It also has epic associated videos. John Gunderson is a giant of the field, but he's a relatable author and tells you what to do in a way that helps you learn it. If you only ever read one book in the entirety of training, this should be it.

Borderline Personality Disorder: A Case-Based Approach (Amazon)

Brian Palmer, M.D., and Brandon Unruh, M.D.

After you've read the above book, this academic text by Unruh and Palmer hammers home the lessons in various use cases. It has a particularly excellent chapter on the management of BPD in Adolescents, which your author co-wrote with Carlene MacMillan, MD .

The full text is here… I'm not the library using their electronic subscription to share this, but it is on the Internet.

Mentalization-Based Treatment for Personality Disorders (Amazon)

Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., and Anthony Bateman MA, FRCPsych

This book and its associated training changed my life. This text's second edition version is both longer and vastly superior to the first edition. Mentalization-based Treatment, or MBT for short, is a manualized psychodynamic psychotherapy. This is the manual. The limitations of it are myriad. It's not written for audiences outside of psychoanalysis or the UK. The language can be offputting. The ideas are revolutionary. It's worth the read, and it's not an easy one. This is a remarkable text, and it's in no way perfect. In many respects, it is more useful than any other book I have ever read. For me, Owen, this is the most routinely useful idea in my world.

The ability to read anything else I'm recommending and then compare it to what doctors Bateman and Fonagy had to say— pretty useful! It's also worth noting how critical the authors themselves are of their work as time passes. They're among the more receptive to new ideas challenging theirs of any brilliant people I've had the pleasure of meeting. It’s a snapshot of where MBT was when they wrote it, so that’s my grain of salt.

Adolescent Suicide and Self-Injury: Mentalizing Theory and Treatment.

Laurel Williams, D.O., and O. Scott Muir, M.D

This is the one that I had a significant amount to do with, along with a much more significant amount that the remarkable and gracious Laurel Williams put in to make this possible. It’s shorter than other MBT books. It’s way easier to read for audiences outside the UK. It’s not perfect. But it’s short and has good illustrations. It’s also not just about adolescents but includes those specific adaptations….

I was also thrilled to see the following.

As a bonus, an adaptation of MBT for Pathological Narcissistic Personality Disorder from Brandon Unruh and Robert Drozek! (available from pre-order).