Effective Treatment of HPD?

Housekeeping

As this Forum grows (and you must admit, the participation here is fantastic!) it gets harder and harder for the "newest" user that arrives to locate solid resource material on their specific topic(s) of interest. In the HPD forum alone there are well over 1,000 topics, with each topic's thread typically consisting of 20 or more posts - that's over 20k posts! And, it's rapidly growing.

The Key Word / Specific Author Search facility is outstanding, and quick, but it can generate a ton of false positives when searching on ambiguous or common language search terms. Going through those large return sets takes a ton of time to find exactly what you are looking for.

Best solution is a controlled vocabulary of subject headings (single and multiple word terms) and thesaurus, but that takes a panel of experts who know the entire landscape up front, each willing to donate a ton of time, participate in ample debate, adhere to production cycles, stay right with it for constant updates, etc. It's never perfect and must be constantly updated.

However, exerting that level of effort pays lasting dividends as control is gained over the raw material. The knowledge becomes much more refined, and the individual trees in the forest can grow taller, built on a better foundation. (Yet they don't grow to the sky because chaos and entropy creeps in eventually!)

The result of that effort is a tidy thesaurus is published by the experts. Its used to direct the "up and coming" experts into what is already historically known. It helps guide newbie users with things like:

Broader Term (BT)
Narrower Term (NT)
Use (USE) / Used For (UF)
Related Term (RT)

In Wikipedia they use a disambiguation page (listing the above terms), that helps guide user from more "random" original search terms, down to a much more specific (controlled vocabulary) Encyclopedia Article. While they encourage you to free search on any term you want (total freedom) the experts make an attempt to eventually "put like things in the same place".

Fully recognizing that a Forum is not a Wiki, and its really built to support a community of users in real time, and will never be a good reference library, and trying to adhere to the KISS principle (no need use for sledge hammer to open a walnut...), here is a quick and dirty start, covering only a tiny portion of what is available in all these posts.

Topical Index to HPD, including links to Topics (Threads) .

Effective treatment of HPD seems to involve a virtually unconscious connection on both ends of any helping / supportive relationship (therapist/patient or intimate HPD/Non relationship).

The Non needs to tap into his “barely conscious” i.e. - trust your gut and sixth sense. Loosen up your tight grip on reality and how things "should" be. Drift slightly into experiencing the HPD’s somewhat rave and wild world of not yet properly processed and linked thoughts and feelings – exclusively around intimate relationships. Dwell there and see if you can’t help process what is going on.

Be especially sensitive to picking up on: displaced, repressed, disassociated, and projected things. These will be linked to the underlying roots of the disorder.

Unique to HPD, on an unconscious level, they absolutely want you to know and will “telegraph” correct and helpful information. (Other PDs such as BPD “telegraph” only misinformation and pure chaos, not so with HPD.)

Source: Derived material here, originating from Bollas, C 1999. More at: Addicted to an HPD?

National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions
2001-2002
Adults (non-institutionalized, 18+ years old)
sample size was 43,000
% found in sample | disorder | (standard error)

7.9% OCD (0.11)
4.4 Paranoid (0.05)
3.6 Antisocial (0.23)
3.1 Schizoid (0.15)
2.4 Avoidant (0.12)
1.8 Histrionic (0.09)
0.5 Dependent (0.15)
14.8% - at least one PD

See: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/ ... 21-130.htm

Above was a very large scale high quality research project. One finding well established was that PDs are very frequently found comorbid with alcohol/drug abusers. By my read of the tables - not everyone with a diagnosable PD has an alcohol/drug problem. but the vast majority of established alcohol/drug abusers are cormorbid a least one diagnosable PD.)

The following cites some research off the above data set that was published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Volume 65:948-958).

The risk of having avoidant, dependent, and paranoid personality disorders is greater for females, while the risk of having antisocial personality disorder is greater for males. There were no gender differences in the risk of having obsessive-compulsive, schizoid, or histrionic personality disorders. Other risk factors for personality disorders included being Native American or Black, being a young adult, having low socioeconomic status, and being divorced, separated, widowed, or never married. With the exception of histrionic personality disorder, all the personality disorders were associated with emotional disability and impairment in social and occupational functioning. Source: http://mentalhealth.about.com/od/person ... prev05.htm

it's such a good thread i think it worth
being brought up again..

Fight fire with fire... start dissociating yourself!!

-- Sun May 20, 2012 5:44 pm --

Ps - Would you say that your partner has more insight into herself as a result of the boundaries that have been put in place?

Teaching by example and therefore guiding is good since they are observant and all.

Great resources herein