Customer Reviews

Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book provides an invaluable resource for a person who is trying to understand a person with BPD,or get help for them. Linehan's method has undergone randomized clinical trials and demonstrated its worth. Nevertheless,it is quite common for therapists to insist they can treat BPD with other methods. Stick with Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy(DBT). The book will arm you well to deal with both therapists,and patient(or yourself if you are the patient.) Accept no substitutes.

While this book is primarily for therapists treating this disorder, it can also be very educational for and quite comforting to family members of people with this disorder. People with BPD can be incredibly upsetting to family members, and not being able to understand why someone is like this can be very frustrating. To read a very detailed explanation of the disorder can be an incredible relief. While the writing style is laced with Psychological jargon (as it should be) a layperson can still understand most all of the concepts in the book. I highly recommend it.

This book is designed for use in skill training groups for BPD. The author offers advice on adapting it to be used in individual therapy however. Linehan is forging a place in the mental health field as the foremost clinican in dealing with BPD. The reader is immediately aware of the extensive amount of research that went into this book. The author is not writing about opinion, she is writing about the results of years of extensively scrutinzing the work of herself and others. On the downside the book has the amount and quality of information one would expect from a textbook. This is not light reading, it is however a page turner (as far as academic texts go) if you have ever felt inadequate when dealing with BPD. After applying the ideas in this book I found that BPD was not the same beast in treating than in the past.

I've just started reading the book and have skimmed the workbook. She is, as one reviewer stated, very compassionate. I myself am a borderline individual, recently discovering it as of last week from a caring boyfriend. I went to the library and checked this book out. Never have I been blown away by how this book describes my feelings and pains so accurately. I never, for all these years, understood what was wrong with me, assuming it was everyone else. Ms. Linehan has definately helped my outlook on life. I'm very grateful for this book.

As a relatively new therapist in a community mental health setting I noticed I kept getting clients that were diagnosed with BPD. No one else seemed to want them and as the new therapist I got "stuck" with them. After many months of frustration and questioning whether or not I made the right career choice, I stumbled across DBT.

My clients are doing much better and I feel much better after reading Linehan's works and attending behavioraltech.com's conferences for training. Case Managers, Psychiatrists, and Therapists are now working together as a team and splitting is not much of an issue anymore.

The techniques are wonderful and I feel so inspired; however, the text is a little dry and I had to give myself little rewards after each chapter to get through this book.

This book lays out a reasonable and realistic plan for confronting and managing the various problems faced by someone suffering from BPD. A must read for patients, therapists and supportive friends or family.

This method, named by the author as DBT, is the most successful method of working with clients with Borderline Personality Disorder. Unfortunately, the hardback book is extremely and unnecessarily wordy. One has to wonder if the author was paid by the number of words. Definitely purchase her workbook, but I am not so sure this book is worth the money, as everything you need is in the workbook. Borrow a copy of this book before you buy it.