Centre for Mental Health Research at the School of Health and Psychological Science, City, University of London welcomes Dr Jay Watts to discuss her findings on the relation between epistemic injustice and the borderline personality disorder as part of the research seminar series.
Abstract
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) has been a controversial diagnosis for over 40 years, with its ongoing existence setting patients who find the diagnosis useful against those who find it damaging.
Even more importantly, the BPD construct enables often under-skilled clinicians to distance themselves from and discard the testimony of patients who need to be seen, heard, and treated with dignity.
Philosopher Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice can help us explore how and why the BPD construct so often negatively affects therapeutic relationships.
This issue raises important questions that we should be concerned about as ICD-11, the latest version of the international classification system most often used in the UK and Europe, approaches its universal adoption, widening the proportion of patients who will be read through the BPD lens.
We’ll explore how simple proposed solutions to the problem, such as re-labelling it as Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Complex Emotional Needs, risk repeating the core problem of homogenizing divergent responses to distress, which deserve a linguistic framework that allows everyone to speak and be heard.
About the speaker
Dr Jay Watts is a consultant clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has led psychosis, family interventions, and psychology Tier 2 services in the NHS.
She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at QMUL, former Psychology Research Lead at Barts, and former Senior Lecturer in Psychology at City University.
Jay is also an editor and contributor to the European Journal of Psychotherapy. Jay started her career as one of the UK's first lived experience practitioners and centres survivor voices and activism in her praxis.
She campaigns and writes for both academic publications and the national press in three areas: problems with the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder; effects of austerity and welfare policy on mental health; and long-term psychotherapy and its uses and misuses for those with a tendency to unravel.
Jay admits to spending far too much time tweeting as @Shrink_at_Large.
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