Hope for the Future
For the person with borderline disorder, and for those who love them, learning to live as fulfilling a life as possible with the disorder is often a struggle. Even though you know that the most successful approach is to do the best you can with what each day offers, at times you may get weary and discouraged.
You may wonder if you really can make it through the rest of your life under these circumstances. More than anything else, this web site is about your doing better and maintaining hope. But as you continue to learn how to deal better with the effects of borderline disorder on your life, how do you maintain a healthy level of optimism?
There are several reasons for you to remain very hopeful about your future:
- The attention focused by the public, mental health care professionals, and health care organizations on borderline disorder is in the early stages of very significant and positive growth. If you would like to read more about the reasons for this growing recognition of borderline disorder click here.
(Clicking on this link will open a PDF article in a new window.)
- There is a growing recognition of the seriousness and prevalence of borderline disorder by agencies and organizations that can influence the resources available to help you. Making contact with the following organizations will enable you to readily access these resources:
- As a result of research on borderline disorder, the types and effectiveness of treatments for the disorder continue to increase at an accelerating rate. These new and effective treatments for borderline disorder will improve the quality of your life now.
- Increasing amounts of research focused on borderline disorder is the ultimate reason for hope. Each year, more research dollars are spent on understanding the causes, nature and more effective treatments of the disorder. In medicine, we never know when the next significant scientific breakthroughs will occur. As research in the area of borderline disorder progresses in quantity and in breadth, small gains will come together and result in large advances. These in turn will enable us to develop earlier and more effective interventions, and ultimately even preventions. Because borderline disorder has a genetic as well as an environmental basis, it may be some time before we are able to identify, then reverse, the genetic problems. But I believe that the time will come, most likely in the lifetimes of those of you who are relatively young, when this will begin to happen.
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Research Agencies, Foundations and Funds You can help make this happen by supporting those organizations that are devoted to this endeavor. I realize that it may seem more effective if requests for increased support for borderline disorder research came primarily from psychiatrists, other mental health professionals, and neuroscientists, especially those in academic institutions. However, I have spent most of my professional career at a number of academic medical centers, and I have come to understand that the effects of advocacy by professionals are only partially successful.
For example:
- No mater how important is an area of research, academic researchers cannot devote their time and talents to an area if there is inadequate funding. Write letters and make visits to your congressman and senators encouraging them to support research in this area. Letters to the NIMH and to the research office of the American Psychiatric Association are also very appropriate and very effective.
- If you have the personal funds, make a contribution to NAMI, and to the private research foundations listed below. If you make a contribution to NARSAD, ask that the money is targeted for research on borderline disorder. If you have ample personal funds, consider supporting at a school of medicine with an endowed chair, a professorship, or a departmental fund directed solely at enhancing the clinical care, research and training in borderline disorder.
While academicians are able to report the latest scientific advances and other relevant information, our pleas for help for more research support do not have the heartfelt effect of people suffering from and directly affected by the disorder. Do not underestimate your capacity to make a difference in this area. It is enormous.
In order to obtain more information about these organizations and how you can help, these are their names and contact numbers:
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
James Breiling, Ph.D.
NIH Institute on Borderline Personality Disorder
301-443-3527
jbreilin@mail nih.gov
www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bpd.cfm
Borderline Personality Disorder Research Foundation
650 Madison Avenue
18th Floor
New York, NY 10022
USA
212-421-5244
Fax: 212-421-5243
bpdrf.usa@verizon.net
www.borderlineresearch.org
National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD)
60 Cutter Mill Road
Suite 404
Great Neck, NY 11021
USA
1-800-829-8289 (voice mail)
516-829-0091
Fax: 516-487-6930
www.narsad.org
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Information Center, SAMHSA
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P.O. Box 42490
Washington, DC 20015
USA
1-800-789-2647
301-984-8796
ken@mentalhealth.org
www.mentalhealth.org
To contact Dr. Friedel, click here >
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