Content area
Full Text
Abstract Indigenous participants who had been given the label Borderline Personality Disorder were engaged in informal interviewins in order to find out more about the contextual factors underlying the symptoms of their diagnosis. Five participants were interviewed at great length about their experiences of identity, their personal histories, and their understanding of their mental illness. A number of themes emerged from the interviews, including identity, racism, family issues, the feeling of walking in two worlds, and experiences of alternative care during childhood. Aspects of personal and collective trauma related to their symptoms and diagnosis were also examined. Finally, knowledge and personal experience of BPD and its symptoms, as well as experiences of mental health services, emerged as strong themes. Table 1 compares the nine DSM-IV symptoms with alternative interpretations based on historical and social contexts reported by participants. We conclude that practitioners need to explore a greater range of contexts for any symptoms, and that rather than thinking of individuals in terms of having a "borderline personality," we suggest rethinking of them in terms of having had "borderline socializing environments."
Keywords Indigenous Australians * Aboriginal Australians * Borderline Personality Disorder * Collective trauma
Introduction
A recent review of the literature addressing the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) for Australian Indigenous people yielded little empirical or contextual data (Fromene et al. 2014). Despite this apparent lack of research, personal observations of the author from encounters in local mental health services revealed that clients were increasingly diagnosed with BPD. This raised a number of questions that formed the core of the current research: how do Indigenous people with a diagnosis of BPD contextualize the behaviors they see; and even if the symptoms appear to be the same, how varied are the origins and how Indigenous-specific are they?
From the context of the literature regarding Indigenous Australians, a potential analysis of each of the nine symptoms of BPD was constructed (Table 1) offering alternative views as to the origins of some of these symptoms. These revolved around differences in the sense of self) or multiple senses of self) from that of other Australians, as well as the effects of collective trauma on Indigenous people over many generations (Krieg 2009). The nine symptoms of BPD could be...