[.ca] Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality ... (ISBN 0898621836)

Effective for higher functioning, motivated borderlines:
I work in a residential treatment facility for SPMI (all clients also have at least one Axis I diagnosis), and most of our clients have too low of intellectual functioning to grasp many of the DBT concepts. As an intellectual and a practicising Buddhist, I enjoy Linehan's text (especially the focus on Zen aspects: primarily mindfulness). I have encountered many therapists who have succesfully utilized DBT with other client populations. Dr. Linehan has poured years of experience and research into this text. For my clients, I have to significantly alter and simplify many of the tennants of this treatment. If you are reading this, you know that Borderlines are a growing (and very timeconsuming) population of consumers and this text should be in the library of all mental health workers.

This is THE MOST EFFECTIVE psychotherapy method:
As soon as our county mental health clinic applied Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), our re-hospitalizations, crisis contacts, suicidal behavior and recidivism rates for our DBT patients went close to ZERO. This is the book I recommend as the start for anyone wanting to be effective in doing psychotherapy - including Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Social Workers, Marriage Family Therapists and Nurses. It empowers the therapist by giving him/her the skills to help severely mentally ill and difficult patients - not just ones with borderline personality disorder. For many, if not most, mental health programs, people with borderline personality disorder are traditionally frustrating, maddening, and looked on with disgust by therapists and medical staff. They are often rejected by staff and treated with anger because of the lack of adequate treatments for the disorder. Yet this is one of the most common mental illnesses. And persons with the disorder repeatedly are hospitalized for suicidal behavior - at large cost to the counties involved. Or worse, they are rejected for hospitalization and allowed to continue to be self-destructive. With DBT this is no longer the case. Therapists who understand DBT are confident and assured when helping seriously ill, constantly hospitalized patients. Therapist who don't often are frustrated, and rejecting of them. No other textbook in therapy is as detailed and well-delineated as this book. It is applicable to inpatient, outpatient, and emergency room settings. DBT works effectively in emergencies, with actively suicidal patients, to reduce the acuity of the situation. It is effective even in short (< 7 day) hospital stays. It takes about ONE YEAR to moderately understand Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It takes about THREE MONTHS of reading and rereading the book to begin to grasp the concepts described in the book. This book is very "meaty" despite its slimness. The book has its own vocabularly (with an eastern philosophy view), which takes the reader out of the usual psychological jargon, which makes the book initially difficult to read. This accounts for the initial anger that readers may have with this book, unless they are aware of eastern philosophies. The book is NOT psychobabble. Chronic patients with years of psychotherapy actually are more accepting of DBT because it doesn't use the psychobabble they are used to and associate with therapeutic failure. The psychotherapy method described is THE MOST EFFECTIVE method I have ever found. It is NOT purely cognitive behavioral therapy. It is very psychodynamic it its point of view. What is interesting is that the therapists who (I find) naturally do Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (without knowledge of this form of therapy) are Psychoanalysts who are well-centered in their own personalities. A difficulty any therapist will have in performing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, is that they will have to work on their own personality faults, blindspots, and Countertransferance, while treating patients. This is a part of DBT. This is crucial in order to perform DBT. But then, continuing supervision or on-going therapy of the therapist, is an important part of being a good therapist. Most therapists already know 80% of the content of this book. However, this book puts all the facets of the art of psychotherapy in the best delineated, and detailed manual, I have found. It is highly recommended.

Fascinating!:
I found this book to be so fascinating and eye opening. Although this book is written for those who TREAT borderline personality disorder, I think it will be very helpful to those who have the disorder. I know it has been a great learning tool for me, and I suffer from BPD. Marsha Linehan shows an amazingly compassionate understanding towards the mind of a person with this disorder. I found myself astonished at her incredible ability to understand the way I think. I think the author is nothing short of a genius. The book is great...but it is complicated and it is not a good book for those who don't enjoy intensely intellectual reading. If you are looking for a book to give you quick facts, this is not the book for you. You must enjoy reading to get into this book.

Respectful to BPD individuals. Techniques used pragmatic:
As a person with Bipolar Disorder my psychiatrist recommended this book. I devoured it. For a text the reason it was actually enjoyable was because so many of the techniques of therapy I could incorporate on my own. The Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is not limited to BPD. The Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of which DBT is alongside, can be put into use immediately. Also, Linehan is respectful in her writing style toward patients/clients, with BPD. She is not quick to prescribe medications, (that being only a brief mention). Linehan's style is to focus on environmental reasons a person becomes BPD but not to the point where the client feels helpless to change. She respects people where they're at but wants to take them where they want to be-and that's by integrating positive thoughts about themselves into positive actions-skills training-to have steadier relationships in work and life. I highly recommend this book to anyone diagnosed with any mood or personality disorder.

A Total Waste of Paper:
At first I thought the author, Marsha Linehan, was a mental patient herself or perhaps foreign-born because this book is so badly written. It's full of new age cliches, tossed in with Eastern mysticism and the author's own ramblings. The author repeats the same words and phrases over and over again, and is fond of making vague circular statements. I'm surprised that an academic like Linehan has such poor writing skills. Maybe a good editor could make sense of Linehan's gobbledygook. I certainly can't.