Borderline Personality Disorder - Essay Example

"Borderline Personality Disorder" is a perfect example of a paper on the disorder.
Being a patient who has Borderline personality disorder (BPD), and looking at the situation described upon her visit to the clinic, it is evident she has developed several defense mechanisms. The first defense mechanism she has is what can be broadly defined as an image distorting defense, specifically the devaluation defense mechanism. In this form of defense, the patient sees all people as being evil. This can be deduced from her behavior of being aggressive and belittling those who are caring for her. Usually, with this kind of response, it becomes challenging to maintain friends or lasting relationships with others. The other form of image distorting defense mechanism that can be observed is the splitting defense mechanism. Here the patient sees others as either being too good or extremely bad, nothing in between. This can be seen from her character of praising the psychiatric triage nurse as being the best at one moment, and then within a very short time, she is referring to her as being a stupid excuse of a nurse (Zanarini, 2009).

The other defense mechanism that the patient has is acting out. This is a kind of defense mechanism that falls under Valliant’s immature defenses. In this form of defense instead of the patient speaking out about their feelings, they prefer to pass their message by doing extreme things for the others to see (Zanarini, 2009). This kind of behavior can be seen when the nurse doesn’t heed the patient's wish of being given the painkiller. Instead of expressing her dissatisfaction with the decision by the nurse she instead yells out at her and demands to see the doctor immediately. This shows how the woman can create drama just to pass out her feelings of being angered by that decision.

Three methods the nurse can handle the situation

Good psychiatric management is one effective way the nurse can employ to handle the situation. Here the nurse will seek to handle the emotions of the patient and try to help her manage them in a manner that will help the patient feel cared for and loved by the nurse. The nurse may make use of medication and involve family education during therapy. The other method that can be used is mentalization-based therapy. Here the nurse will use talk therapy to help the patient identify her feelings and thoughts thereby making her have different perspectives towards a given situation. This will help her to start thinking more before she can react and at the same time, she will get the importance of getting other people’s views. Finally, dialectical behavior therapy can be used whereby the nurse will teach the patient skills that can help her manage emotions and improve on relationships with others (Mayo clinic, 2019).

Three safety issues present with the patient

The three main safety issues present with the patient are self-injury, drug abuse, and strained relationships, especially at work.

Three teaching points to offer if the patient is released.

The first main teaching point for the patient if released is emotional control and stability. To help her in recovery she needs to work on controlling her anger and extreme mood swings. This can be attributed as the main cause of her strained relationship at work or even with friends and family. The other symptom of concern that shows how far the disorder has affected her is the engagement in risky behaviors. This can be shown by the frequent times she has been brought to the hospital due to drug and substance abuse which can be seen to have escalated to an uncontrollable level given the number of times she has been hospitalized for this same problem. Finally, the last teaching point is the suicidal tendencies associated with this disorder. The patient has shown to be fond of injuring herself several times which has led to her hospitalization. This if not controlled early enough through appropriate therapies might get the patient to eventually have life-threatening self-injury leading to eventual suicide (Leichsenring et al, 2011).