Most Helpful Customer Reviews
67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Book on BPD Out There for Consumers & Familes! Bravo!, December 26, 2002
This review is from: New Hope for People with Borderline Personality Disorder: Your Friendly, Authoritative Guide to the Latest in Traditional and Complementary Solutions (Paperback)
I own the site BPD Today and have kept up with all of the BPD books that have come out. I just finished this book and I'm not only pleased, I'm stunned! This book discusses EVERYTHING a consumer would want to know and more. Easy to read. Filled with knowledge about what BPD is, treatment, a special outstanding section for families - you name it, it is here. This book I know will further not only consumer's knowlege of the BPD but it is helpful for families as well. I believe clinicians will learn a great deal in regards to treatment. This book is easily the best book out there for the BPD consumer. It is also the best book for BPD families and those that love the people who suffer this very painful disorder. The family section reads totally without stigma, is understanding of the consumer and contains information on things you can do to help. There is no blaming of the Borderline consumer in "New Hope..." If you have the BPD or are a family member, this book is priceless. In many cases it is us who have to educate our mental health clinicians in order to be treated correctly. BPD is highly misunderstood in this society. This disorder is treatable and the information is here in this book.
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105 of 119 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good in parts, November 16, 2003
This review is from: New Hope for People with Borderline Personality Disorder: Your Friendly, Authoritative Guide to the Latest in Traditional and Complementary Solutions (Paperback)
This is an excellent overview of a difficult subject, and, as a professional in the field I enjoyed it and learned from it. As a self-help book for patients I thought it was too technical in parts. Some studies of treatment are described at length complete with their statistics. The authors are somewhat inconsistent in their demands for rigorous proof of treatment efficacy. Alternative therapies, homeopathy, and things like the Feingold diet are described in a credulous way. They are also uncritical about projective tests. They quote DSMIV as if it was brought down from Mt Sinai by Moses. Much of what it says about personality disorders is dubious. In fact. to be honest, some of these conditions are closer to misbehavior than to illness, but I suppose that's too philosophical an issue for a book like this to deal with. They should have mentioned hotlines in their discussion of suicide. The descriptions of etiology obscure the fact that most findings are fuzzy and inconclusive. They say the parents are not to blame then state that "studies have shown that approximately two-thirds to three-quarters of people with BPD have a history of being abused sexually." I thought Chapter 3 (Psychotherapy) was the best, with lucid explanations of the different approaches and a good summary of Linehan's work. There are very useful appendixes with referral sources and WEB sites.
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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Important Information, December 30, 2005
This review is from: New Hope for People with Borderline Personality Disorder: Your Friendly, Authoritative Guide to the Latest in Traditional and Complementary Solutions (Paperback)
As I was searching for a book on BPD, I found it astonishingly difficult to understand the books nature without actually buying it and reading it, which makes the whole "searching and inquiring previously to purchase" almost impossible.
So I decided to give a quick explanation on this book, in addition to a review, so that other people might find the information useful...
"New Hope for people with BPD" is not a self help book; it is a self-help suggestion book. Meaning, the book begins, as does every other BPD book, with describing the disorder, explaining the DSM criteria and giving useful information about the condition. After that, the author proceeds to vastly describing treatment methods found in the USA today.
Throughout the book he covers many different kinds of therapeutic approaches quite objectively, leaving the reader with a ton of useful info and a bigger chance to make an educated decision on the therapeutic approach that is right for him/her. If up until now you had to go to a therapist and raise the question of "how are you planning to treat me?" without knowing anything about other ways, now you can read this book and decide beforehand on the way you see fittest for yourself.
The author includes various alternative approaches, such as alternative medicine, self help and nutritional options, but he does not give direct instruction on how to actually treat the disease, only information about options out there.
It is true that the author does concentrate mainly on the extreme symptoms of BPD, rather than the root of the problem, but then again, he is not presuming to solve the problem, but to help us find a way to solve it ourselves with the help of therapy.
I found this book to be extremely helpful and informational, non-presumptuous, and intelligent, and there's nothing I love more than an author who trusts the readers ability to understand "smart-stuff"...
I recommend this book as your first BPD book, but make sure you modify your expectations - if you can't afford therapy or do not want to go to therapy, this might not be the book for you.
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