Are there any good inventories for differentiating Borderline Personality from

[HereSince1628]

other disorders that involve emotional dysregulation?

Is the SWAP 200 just a research tool or is it also diagnostic?

The VA has assigned me to a young psychologist who has experience with PTSD but not much in working with BPD.
I really want a good diagnosis, not the shrink's favorite disorder.

[mopinko]

1. can't answer your question, but

welcome, and best of luck.

[EFerrari]

2. I've done a lot of work ( of the kind family members do)

on BPD but before I put my oar in, what is the SWAP 200?

[HereSince1628]

3. The Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure

Apparently 200 questions in length.

[EFerrari]

4. Interesting. I've never heard of it.

I finally came to think of BPD as the PTSD that your chemistry does to you, rather than an outside event. The treatment for both conditions seems very closely related.

[HereSince1628]

5. I'm convinced that the ambiguity and overlap of diagnostic criteria

with lots of other disorders makes differential diagnosis difficult at best and a crap shoot at worst. Add onto that diagnostic biases based on experience, belief, and educational biases about gender bias based on historic underreporting of a condition in one sex and it just makes me beg for something that forces the diagnostician to weigh all the possibilities and to formally discriminate among them.

[EFerrari]

6. I've been a big fan of Marsha Linehan's work over the years.

Have your ever read at her website? I haven't for some time but her ideas and technques made a world of difference to our family.

[HereSince1628]

7. I'm not sure if I've been on her site but I know about DBT

because it's mentioned on almost every BPD website.

[EFerrari]

8. I wrote a little book -- actually, it was just a compilation

of about a year's worth of my posts to a support group I ran for a while and mailed Marsha a copy. She responded in a short note. I really like her just as a human bean. And in how her mind works. Her writing is very clear, there's no bs there.

[HereSince1628]

9. It's doubtful if I'll be ready to do group sessions for a long time

if ever. I appreciate that it works well for some/many.

All my schizoid/avoidant/fear of public emotional storms coping mechanisms are part of my need to get a well differentiated diagnosis. My personal space has long been sheltered from all the split out 'idiots not like me' categories, and I am much less likely to 'go-off' when I'm alone. So although I've read much about the importance of group sessions the process remains personally abhorrent, and I'm currently about as friendly to it as I am to the vomitoriums that substitute for psych ward common bathrooms.

[EFerrari]

10. Having done both boundary repair AND group work myself,

I'm not an advocate of group work when part of the issue is less than sturdy boundaries. As you say, it just aggravates an already complicated situation. And half of the time I think people who do advocate for group work are doing so for financial reasons rather than therapeutic ones.

[HereSince1628]

11. You are probably right, one group leader to a circle of patients

certainly has the potential to be cheaper.

I suppose that the lower costs is also a way to provide some help to people who have insurance that won't cover months of weekly one-on-one sessions.