Representations of
‘personality disorder’
Kirsten Stalker, Aileen Barclay and
Iain Ferguson, Stirling University
Approaches to ‘personality
disorder’
• Psychiatric discourse
• Behavioural
• Childhood trauma
• Social model of madness + distress
Glasgow Study – aims +
methods
• to explore users’ views re meaning of
‘personality disorder’ + the
usefulness of this term
• to seek users’ accounts of the
difficulties they experience
• to identify users’ views of what
helps
• interviewed 10 users (+ 12 providers)
Understandings of PD
• most users had little or no idea
• some thought something
fundamentally ‘wrong’ with them
• a few thought just another label
• one or two questioned aspects
• lack of information + explanation
• discovered diagnosis by chance
Usefulness of diagnosis
• half saw PD as a derogatory term
• label excluded people from support
• a few thought some diagnosis better
than none
Type of difficulties
• Forming + maintaining relationships
• Poverty, domestic violence,
homelessness, substance misuse
• Stigma and discrimination
• Coping with day to day activities
Causes of difficulties
• Almost all saw childhood abuse as
major factor
• Experiences of loss
What helps?
• Wide range of coping strategies
- going to mental health resource centre
- talking to someone; keeping busy
- martial arts; going to bed
- medication; ‘keeping yourself to yourself’
- ‘fighting the illness’; drugs + alcohol
- overdosing; cutting
• Almost all were positive re mental health
services, but building trust was hard
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Implications for a social
model?
‘PD’ involved distress not illness
significance of life events
impact of social/ economic factors
interaction of private/emotional and
social/ structural dimensions
• social relational model – impairment
effects, material barriers, + psychoemotional disablism