Advocacy & Support for
Borderline Personality Disorder
& Complex Trauma
2017 'From Stigma to Strength' Conference
7th ANNUAL NATIONAL BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER CONFERENCE in Perth
Welcome to Country – Ms Marie Taylor, Conference Elder
President's & Host's Address: Julien McDonald and Rod Astbury
'Lifting the lid: it’s time for a national focus on BPD’: Dr. Peggy Brown
‘Building a healthcare system response to Borderline Personality Disorder’
Professor Andrew Chanen
‘From Stigma to Strength - A Carer Perspective’: Rita
‘Fighting Stigma and finding Strength’: Sonia Neale
Building Bridges & Fences: Core Treatment Strategies for BPD: A/Prof S. Rao & Ms Teresa Stevenson
Western Australia ‘Personality Disorders Mental Health Sub Network Group
Closing Remarks – Ms Julien McDonald (President) & A/Prof Sathya Rao (Deputy President) Australian BPD Foundation
Formation of WA branch of the Australian BPD Foundation Ms Sharon Karas and Samantha Scott (Mental Illness Fellowship WA)
Welcome to Country – Ms Marie Taylor, Conference Elder
Marie Taylor is a proud descendant of the Whadjuck/Barlardong Noongar people, the most ancient peoples of the world, and
is also of Dutch heritage. Marie is the eldest of 10 children and mother of three children and grandmother of 16 grandchildren.
She was also a foster parent and these children are still part of her life today.
Ministerial Address – HON. Alanna Clohesy MLC, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Premier; Minister for Health; Mental Health
President's & Host's Address: Julien McDonald and Rod Astbury
President's & Host's Address: Julien McDonald (President Australian BPD Foundation) and Rod Astbury (CEO WA Association for Mental Health)
The Western Australian Association for Mental Health (WAAMH) and the Australian BPD Foundation are proud to be co-hosting the 7th National Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Conference. The Conference offers delegates with both lived experience and professional experience, the opportunity to come together and share their knowledge and practice, strengthening our wonderful sector.
Mr Astbury said WAAMH as an organisation prides itself on raising community awareness, and increasing participation and support for mental wellbeing, recovery and citizenship.
WAAMH’s involvement and the involvement and participation of every delegate is a representation of Australia’s and Western Australia dedication to improving and sustaining meaningful change in mental health services.
Ms McDonald said the Australian BPD Foundation is committed to changing the negative culture around Borderline Personality Disorder into a more hopeful, optimistic one where people realize that with access to appropriate evidence based treatment recovery is possible. Holding an annual National BPD conference is one of the ways the Foundation contributes to bringing about this cultural change.
The 2017 conference will highlight local strategies and successful techniques; while showcasing consumer and carer leadership in reducing stigma and highlighting the strength of everyone involved in improving treatment, care and support for people with Borderline Personality Disorders, their carers and families. We thank you for your attendance and look forward to collaborating with you during the conference.
'Lifting the lid: it’s time for a national focus on BPD’: Dr. Peggy Brown
Dr Peggy Brown, Chief Executive Officer, National Mental Health Commission Dr Brown commenced as Chief Executive Officer of the National Mental Health Commission in October 2016.
Involved in mental health leadership and advocacy roles for 30 years, Peggy has a deep understanding of the many challenges of meeting the social and health needs of people with mental health and substance use issues.
“While I have seen many improvements in service delivery over the years - including reorientation to community based care, an emphasis on human rights and increasing focus on consumer and carer participation as well as recovery based approaches - much remains to be done.
“I see my work at the Commission as a vital opportunity to continue to advocate for improvements in service delivery and for the other supports necessary to enable people living with mental illness to lead contributing lives in socially and economically thriving communities,” she says.
‘Building a healthcare system response to Borderline Personality Disorder’ Professor Andrew Chanen
(Director, Clinical Services, Orygen Youth Health Clinical Program; Deputy Research Director, Orygen Youth Health Research Centre and Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne)
We apologise due to a technical problem Professor Chanen's presentation is not available.
This keynote presentation is proudly supported by the National Mental Health Commission
The explosion of knowledge about borderline personality disorder (BPD) has provided solid ground for early diagnosis and treatment of both subthreshold borderline personality pathology and full-syndrome BPD. Yet BPD diagnosis is usually delayed and specific treatment is only offered late in the course of the disorder. Moreover, the BPD treatment literature misleadingly implies that lengthy individual psychotherapy is both necessary and sufficient for the treatment of all individuals with BPD, despite evidence that such services are inaccessible to most people with BPD, that ‘high-quality care’ might be as effective as ‘branded’ psychotherapies, and that intermittent care might be effective.
Service delivery models are required that recognise the heterogeneity of BPD, and that support a range of treatment options, at all levels of the health system, which are appropriate and proportionate to the phase and stage of disorder. “Clinical staging,” similar to disease staging in general medicine, is presented as a pragmatic, heuristic, and trans-diagnostic framework to guide prevention and intervention for BPD across the life course.
Clinical staging defines an individual’s location along the continuum of the evolving temporal course of a disorder. Such staging aids differentiation of early or milder clinical phenomena from those that accompany illness progression and chronicity, and suggests the application of appropriate sequential, targeted, and proportionate intervention strategies.
‘From Stigma to Strength - A Carer Perspective’: Rita
Rita will be presenting to us “From Stigma to Strength: a Carer Perspective” based on her personal experiences of supporting a family member with BPD and her discussions with many other carers. She believes that the consistent support of others plays a vital role in supporting the person experiencing the distress of BPD. She will offer families and workers strategies to assist them to be supportive and to be able to maintain that role.
Rita’s passion is to work with and advocate for the needs of carers while also remaining sensitive to the needs of people with BPD and clinicians and other workers.
Rita is currently the Carer Consultant for Spectrum the Personality Disorder Service for Victoria and draws on her lived experience as a family member of someone with BPD to advocate for the needs of families and friends within Spectrum, other services and the wider community.
She is a volunteer, founding and current board member of the Australian BPD Foundation and a co-facilitator of the Mind Australia BPD Family and Carer Support Group.
This keynote presentation is proudly supported by the National Mental Health Commission
‘Fighting Stigma and finding Strength’: Sonia Neale
It’s difficult to change your life when you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s heart-breaking when you are diagnosed with BPD without your knowledge, with others knowing what you don’t. I didn’t know anything for a long time; I just hated myself. There is much self-stigma as well as community stigma.
Till I learned the only person who could change my life was me.
Turning self-stigma into self-strength required looking deep into who I thought I was, finding strengths where I thought there wasn’t any, forgiving myself for being me and grieving for what was lost. I also found personal strength in therapy, reflection, yoga, meditation, hiking, biking, lake walks and eating only what heals my body. I found a new way of being with other people, including my family. Fighting stigma and finding strength is now my passion.
This keynote presentation is proudly supported by the National Mental Health Commission
Sonia Neale is a NGO Mental Health Peer Support Worker helping people with mental illness find their strengths and skills to achieve their goals. Sonia was the recipient of the Inaugural SANE Australia Barbara Hocking Fellowship in 2014 where she visited the UK, USA and Canada to study and research BPD services, programs and
organisations.
Sonia is passionate about using her extensive knowledge to help educate and support people, both consumers and carers in the community. Sonia believes that with the right support people with BPD can recover to live a good life.
She feels that education and fighting stigma has played a crucial role in her own recovery from BPD. She has a Cert IV in Mental Health and has almost completed her Psychology and Counselling degree at Edith Cowan University.
Building Bridges & Fences: Core Treatment Strategies for BPD: A/Prof S. Rao & Ms Teresa Stevenson
Borderline Personality Disorder is a public health priority. However, the current mental health workforce is not adequately trained in the treatment of BPD. NHMRC Clinical Practice Guidelines for management of BPD outlines treatment strategies that most mental health clinicians can learn and apply in the treatment of BPD, in their own clinical settings. Objective of this workshop is to discuss the core treatment strategies for BPD. The workshop will utilize a combination of teaching methods such as role plays, didactic lectures and case discussions.
Associate Professor Sathya Rao (Executive Clinical Director, Spectrum, Personality Disorder Service for Victoria; Deputy President of Australian BPD Foundation)
Ms Teresa Stevenson (Clinical Psychology Coordinator & Senior Clinical Psychologist, Peel & Rockingham Kwinana Mental Health Services). Teresa's presentation in unavailable.
Western Australia ‘Personality Disorders Mental Health Sub Network Group
This presentation focuses on the development of the WA Personality Disorder Sub-Network and some of the initiatives that are being planned and the opportunities for others to become involved.
The WA Mental Health Network is co-sponsored by the Department of Health and the Mental Health Commission and was established in 2014 with the aim of providing a strategic platform for service users and providers in mental health, to work together and in collaboration with other Health Networks in WA “to facilitate a state-wide transformative process”.
The Health Networks also aim to facilitate an integrated health system which can provide better care for better value. The Mental Health Network quickly became the largest of the health networks, with more than 1600 members who were interested in reforming and developing many different aspects of the system and so the sub-networks were developed to address difficulty co-ordinating such a large network. A sub-network can bring together people to focus on the needs of a specific cohort of service users. There was interest from the sector to focus on developing and reforming a system that better meets the needs of people who are living with the challenges of a personality disorder, and so the sub-network was established in late 2016. It is the youngest of the sub-networks, but has an enthusiastic group of people on the steering committee who are in the early stages of developing shared understandings of the issues and potential strategies to address these concerns. The sub-networks aim to build consensus to support the decision-makers in the mental health system, who are, in turn, responsible for planning, development, delivery and funding of mental health services in WA.
Presenter & Chair
Dr Helen McGowan (Clinical Director & Psychiatrist of Old Age, Older Adult Program, Mental Health & PHAC, NMHS, Department of Health; Co-Lead WA Mental Health Network, Department of Health)
Panellists
Ms Catherine Holland (Carer Peer Support Worker, Helpingminds; Co-Chair WAMHN Personality Disorder Subnetwork)
Ms Kelly Ryan (WAMHN Personality Disorder Subnetwork Steering Group member, Lived Experience representative; Vice Chair Youth Affairs Council of WA).
Dr Giulia Pace (WAMHN Personality Disorder Subnetwork, Steering Group member; Head of services Touchstone CAMHS; Consultant Psychiatrist & Developmental Neuropsychiatrist; Clinical Lecturer, school of Paediatrics & Child Health of UWA & Rural Clinical School of WA).
Ms Sandra McMillan (Co-Chair WAMHN Personality Disorder Subnetwork; Senior Psychologist Youth Unit, Fiona Stanley Hospital).
Closing Remarks – Ms Julien McDonald (President) & A/Prof Sathya Rao (Deputy President) Australian BPD Foundation
Formation of WA branch of the Australian BPD Foundation Ms Sharon Karas and Samantha Scott (Mental Illness Fellowship WA)
