awake
jumpthesnark, Mill is writing about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (and her other mental health conditions, PTSD and depression) every day for the month of May as a BPD Awareness Month with the aim that readers will donate 30 of whatever currency they prefer to MSF (Medicine Sans Frontiers - Doctors Without Borders) at the end of the month. I am finding it very interesting and, although I do not have access to a professional diagnosis for my mental health mess other than "clinical depression", PTSD and BPD do ring a lot of bells for me, the latter more in the past than now (I HUGE breakdown/episode at university including stalking, violence, suicidal ideation and attempts as well as many other ticks on the BPD diagnosis checklist) but the tendencies are still there underneath and in the background albeit managed and self-acknowledged.I do not agree with or like self-diagnosis but do not have access to professional diagnosis at this time. I am also not sure what getting a diagnosis would achieve when the BPD-like-ness is pretty dormant right now. My latest counsellor did agree that PTSD was likely as a diagnosis for me, even though she was not a shrink as such and so not able to formally diagnose me herself. We did not discuss BPD but we did talk about my almost-schizophrenia-like episode at uni along with my fears of schizophrenia due to the incidence of that in both sides of my family. Bear in mind that my self-diagnosis of multiple sclerosis came many years before the professionals would agree that that was, in fact, what I had.
So, if you know someone with mental health conditions such as depression, BPD, PTSD or schizophrenia, you need to read these posts. Mill is also training in psychology and a trained counsellor. These posts are written from the POV of the person with BPD as well as, occasionally, from the POV of the therapist/mental health professional. She is dealing with symptoms, medication, how to talk to the person with BPD, how to deal with their violence, how to cope with having the condition yourself and many other useful and well written topics. I have even added her to my LJFriends so as not to miss any posts from her.</li>
apiphile did something very similar which is what inspired jumpthesnark - wrote 30 poems within the month of April. 