Yale NEA-BPD Conference: Managing Related Cognitive Challenges

The conference Co-directors welcome and orient to this year's conference including issues of stigma, NEA-BPD offerings, and this year's conference theme: Managing Related Cognitive Challenges: Dissociation, Psychosis, and Intellectual Impairments.

Objectives: What is BPD? Challenges in Diagnosis What are the cognitive perceptual disturbances in BPD? Challenges in treatment and good news

Neuropsychological Deficits: BPD is associated with a range of cognitive deficits, with no two individuals necessarily showing the same types of difficulties. The most frequently affected neuropsychological domains include memory, response inhibition and planning. These deficits are subserved by many of the same brain regions that are responsible for regulating emotions. Implications for Treatment: Worse executive function and visual memory may be associated with a greater likelihood of dropout from treatment (Fertuck et al., 2012). Individualized neuropsychological assessments may assist substantially with treatment planning, which could avoid obstacles patients may later encounter in effectively engaging with treatments.

From the related article, Sawyer, A. (2011). Let's talk: a narrative of mental illness, recovery, and the psychotherapist's personal treatment. Journal of clinical psychology, 67(8), 776-788: This article describes the author's experience in psychotherapy, beginning as a suicidal teenager with a dismal prognosis, through 5 years of hospitalization, including shock treatment that erased most memory before age 20, through an Ivy League education, and successful professional career. Retraumatization triggered by reading her hospital records 40 years later adds a unique perspective, as the author watched, but could not control, a process within herself that she regularly addressed as therapist with her own patients. Healing aspects of relationships with three psychodynamic psychotherapists (two psychiatrists and a social worker), credited with her survival and success, are examined. A dramatic interview with Harold Searles, her psychiatrist's supervisor, and its role in her recovery is considered. Lasting lessons concerning the healing aspects of psychotherapy, the effects of repressed early trauma encountered late in life, the need to counter stigma, and the value of personal psychotherapy are discussed. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20822/full

This talk covers: Improving accessibility to DBT individual therapy; Quick Step Assessment; Improving accessibility to DBT skills; Skills System overview; Description of each skill.

Conference presenters answer audience questions.

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, delivers the lecture "Childhood Trauma, Affect Regulation, and Borderline Personality Disorder" as part of the 9th Annual Yale NEA-BPD Conference.