Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD [Paperback]

Robert O. Friedel (Author), Perry D. Hoffman (Foreword), Dixianne Penney (Foreword), Patricia Woodward (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2004

Over six million Americans suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a chronic, disabling psychiatric condition that causes extreme instability in their emotional lives, behavior, and self-image, and severely impacts their family and friends. In Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified, Dr. Robert Friedel, a leading expert in BPD and a pioneer in its treatment, has turned his vast personal experience into a useful and supportive guide for everyone living with and seeking to understand this condition. Friedel helps readers grasp the etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder, the course it takes, the difficulties in diagnosing it, the types of treatment available, strategies for coping, and much more. Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified is an invaluable resource for everyone diagnosed with BPD, those who think they might have the illness, and friends and family who love and support them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Friedel, six million Americans suffer from the psychiatric disorder known as borderline personality disorder—and many of these people often go undiagnosed and live in the lonely fear that they simply lack willpower or self-confidence. Friedel, a distinguished clinical professor of psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University, steps in to explain this little-known and much-misunderstood disorder, and he offers not only information but hope—many people believe BPD isn’t treatable, but Friedel says that there are effective treatments available. BPD, like many other psychiatric disorders, results from chemical imbalances in the brain, Friedel says. The emotional instability, impulsive behavior and impaired reasoning that often characterize BPD can thus be controlled with therapy and medication, though Friedel also stresses the importance of the patient’s taking responsibility for following through on treatment. For readers who suspect that they or someone they love suffers from BPD, this guide is a good place to start learning how to find help.
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About the Author

ROBERT FRIEDEL, MD, is Distinguished Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Current Psychiatry Reports and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder. Friedel lives in Virginia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1 edition (August 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569244561
• ISBN-13: 978-1569244562
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Personality Disorders

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overall broad reference and resource written from compassionate place, August 8, 2006

By 

Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL" (Livermore, CA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD (Paperback)

This is an excellent overall resource for BPD. It covers the history, causes and course of the disorder as well as the most common treatments both pharmacologically and therapeutically.

The scope of the book is very broad and includes information for family members, lots of additional resources, co-occurring disorders and how this problem shows up in children.

If you have a scientific bent, you will benefit a lot from the chapter on BPD and the brain. There is a lot of detail on the specific neural pathways involved in impulsive behavior, memory impairment, etc. This information is nicely summarized in easy to understand diagrams and there is a simplified bottom line explanation at the end of the chapter. This section is well explained and anyone should be able to understand it, even people intimidated by scientific explanations.

The overall tone of the book is compassionate and hopeful. The author had a sister who had this order and a lot of his motivation for writing it comes from this space of caring and wanting to share both his experience and knowledge. Being a psychiatrist, he dovetails deep knowledge with understanding and compassion.

As you may know, BPD is often misdiagnosed and this book helps differentiate multiple things that may be going on and explains how to get clear on whether or not BPD is really something that is going on. I think this is a very important section and it provides enough detail to be useful, but in general he keeps his explanations of other disorders short and to the point.

The discussion of psychotherapies is excellent and collected into an excellent summary of which ones are best and the indication for when to use them. There is a misconception that the prognosis for Borderline Disorder is not very good among many people, this is dispelled in this book and the supporting arguments for this conclusion are good.

An added bonus is current research needs and directions. If you have BPD, you will be very interested in knowing where this area is headed and hearing about the cutting edge of today's research.

I think the book could have benefited from better organization, design and more careful editing. However, the content is excellent and there is a lot of useful information in a relatively small space. This book is a one-stop resource and a nice compliment to other books that focus on one particular dimension of this issue. The shortcoming in how the information is organized and presented is my only reason for giving it a four rating, the content is excellent and it's a fairly easy read for most people.

I have a good background in psychology and also in physiology and biochemistry. At one time, I did drug research and currently I work in the psychology field. I have read a number of books on this topic and this is one of the best.

58 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BPD Truly "Demystified", September 1, 2004

By 

Barbara Hamon "musician" (Boise, ID) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD (Paperback)

Thank God for Dr. Friedel's compassionate, informational, and helpful book. Finally a book to replace "I Hate You..." which is outdated. I suffer from BPD and am just now coming to terms with the illness. I am a mental health professional who has been used to all the "inside" jokes about BPD. I have been terrified of the diagnosis but can no longer reject it. This book has taught me that I am not alone, and that I am not a big freak. Everything I experience (and that those in my life experience with me) is real. It is full of information about treatment and is also full of acceptance and hope. Of any book that I would recommend for both professionals and persons with BPD, THIS would be the one!!!!

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Guide to Understanding BDP, October 30, 2005

By 

Tulip (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified: An Essential Guide for Understanding and Living with BPD (Paperback)

This book is thorough, comprehensive and very INSIGHTFUL in its description of Borderline Personality Disorder, and offers detailed lists of available treatments, medications and resources to help patients and their families deal with this desease. I know it because I suffer from BPD and Dr. Friedel describes me to a T... I am the anxious-fearful BPD sufferer with a dose of depression... I was pleasantly surprised to find a clinician who finally gets what I think and feel, something that is not very common.

Before reading this book, I had been told I was suffering from BPD, but I really did not understand what BPD was, even while attending therapy. After reading this book, I finally believe I suffer from this disorder, and I am more informed about what kind of therapist and treatment I want and deserve.

Mr. Friedel is neither reproachful nor punishing to those suffering from BDP, something that I highly appreciate. He is a flash of fresh air among the psychiatrists and psychologists I have known, who somehow believed I did not have a real problem with my emotions and myself, and therefore believed, I could completely control my actions regardless of the level of suffering I was in... (A psychiatrist after a crisis took me aside and told me he would restrain me with a force jacket if I continued asking him questions; and I was supended from therapy, of all things, at a hospital treatment program after an on-site self-destructive incident without a discussion of the reasons I was hurting myself... that goes far enough to show that patients NEED to be discriminat about who they choose as a therapist, and Dr. Friedel points this out: not all therapists are willing nor able to treat BPD patients.)

Dr. Robert O. Friedel REALLY knows what he is talking about, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about this poorly understood disorder.