Borderline Personality Disorder and Parenting

Did you know mental health, alcohol, drug, and housing services, emergency departments, and the justice system are disproportionately used by people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

30% of all child protection notifications in Australia involve a parent with BPD. Workers in the field are at a loss about how to work with clients with BPD and their children.

The characteristic symptoms of BPD have major implications for parenting – externalising problems onto others, fear of being abandoned, unstable and fractured relationships, impulsivity, risk-taking, poor self-image, suicidal ideation and behaviour, self-harm, extreme mood swings, anger and paranoid ideation, anxiety, depression, difficulties with compassion and empathy, poor planning and execution, and over-blown aspirations.

A difficulty for all practitioners is how to make a real difference in the relationship between the client diagnosed with BPD and their children.

The presence of BPD in one parent means that ordinary approaches often do not make a difference. The presence of BPD in one parent compromises cooperation and negotiation forcing the other parent to either contest or excessively accommodate, both of which have serious implications for parenting and children.

Do you work with parents with borderline personality disorder? Are you stuck, and need more knowledge, skills and strategies?

A presentation and Q & A with Bower Place Director, Malcolm Robinson – a qualified Social Worker, Family Therapist and Mediator – combining current research and fifty years clinical, therapeutic, teaching, and management experience across the mental health, welfare, education, disability, and justice systems.
And
Josephine Colella – Bower Place Practitioner, Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and Family Therapist. Josephine has experience working in complex and comorbid mental health and is a Member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW). She has a Bachelor of Psychological Science, a Graduate Diploma of Counselling and Psychotherapy, a Certificate IV in Mental Health, a Graduate Diploma of Family Therapy, and a Master of Social Work, and is a registered provider under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Participants will have access to the latest theory and data and can participate in a Q and A forum.

The presentation will include information and discussion about BPD, genetics, and gender – the implications for parenting, attachment, differentiation, relationship fractures, risk, and safety – when working with parents with BPD.