What is Borderline Personality Disorder?
A speech I gave in September, 2016.
This is a daily healthcare newsletter written by Owen Muir, M.D. The following is adapted from a speech I gave in 2016.
46,000 Americans killed themselves this year. Close to 500,000 visited an ER for "self-inflicted harm," which includes attempts at suicide.
Shakespeare did a better job of understanding that humans have personalities, and sometimes they aren't working as well as they should, which can lead people to complete suicide. Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Timon of Athens, almost everyone other than Julius Caesar except Julius Caesar, the list goes on. I'm a psychiatrist as part of a long story that includes my grandfather's life ending in 1939 at the end of a noose in his basement. I have another family member who miraculously didn't die when the liver transplant she was denied to treat her liver failure after an overdose attempt didn't end up being required. We don't know for sure what my family members, or any other people who died from suicide, were suffering from. Or if they had any mental illness at all. Most do, however. And borderline personality disorder, or "BPD," noticed or not, is a major contributor to these deaths. Deaths none of us needed.
We are here tonight to light the way forward for people who are struggling with suicide and the people whose lives are affected by that struggle. Suicide is the final common pathway of a variety of ills. However, unlike a heart attack, stroke, or other causes of death, the Medical Examiner's Office will not find the cause of anyone's suicide. Furthermore, unlike most causes of death, suicide ends the lives of many young people. It is the third leading cause of death of young people in America. In the wake of someone's death by their own hand, a lingering question among survivors is, "Why"?