Motion on Borderline Personality Disorder
15/10/2014
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: I speak today as the seconder and co-mover of this motion. As a passionate advocate not only for the content of this motion but mental health and mental health awareness more broadly, I want to start by acknowledging that I am in a privileged position to be able to be here in this chamber talking about Mental Health Awareness Week and talking about World Mental Health Day which we have just had, but for many people, especially those with a stigmatised disorder like borderline personality disorder, every day is Mental Health Awareness Day and every week is Mental Health Awareness Week.
Every day people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) face the discrimination, the stigma, the trauma and pain of borderline personality disorder, so I am very proud to move this motion, together with the Hon. Tammy Franks. Dignity for Disability has been working on this issue for quite some time. It is very pleasing to be joined by a parliamentary colleague and, hopefully, as the Hon. Ms Franks alluded, more and more colleagues as time goes on.
As my honourable colleague, the Hon. Tammy Franks, has said, borderline personality disorder has been ignored, sidelined and kept on the borders for far too long. It is, as I believe the wonderful Dr Martha Kent labelled it, the Cinderella of mental illness, and it is time that South Australia provided appropriate services for people with this particular mental illness. Certainly it is arguable that the name of the condition does not help. The fact that it is called borderline personality disorder often seems to imply to people that it is something that you almost have, or that you are on the borderline of having.
For years it has also been seen as the mental illness that is too hard to treat. People with BPD are often presenting at emergency departments with varying health issues that they then find to be ignored, mistreated, stigmatised and put down on the basis that the person has a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and, therefore, can sometimes exhibit symptoms that do not manifest physically or that the patient is somehow otherwise considered untrustworthy, or even crazy.
Needless to say this does not help people who already feel misunderstood, ignored, rejected, dejected, hurt and mistreated by those around them, by society more generally and by the family members and even the friends who do try to help them. Like those with what could arguably be called other invisible disabilities such as stoma, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, acquired brain injury, or other psychiatric disabilities or illnesses, accepting that someone has BPD and that this is a reality for them and one that needs support and treatment has proved a challenge for our community, our health system and even for our mental health services.
We used to have a day service at the Glenside campus of the Royal Adelaide Hospital here in South Australia called The Willows. This provided services to people with borderline personality disorder but, unfortunately, tragically, this service was closed back in the mid-90s. Nothing replaced this day service. We have dialectic behavioural therapy, or DBT, that is highly regarded as an effective treatment for people with borderline personality disorder. However, there are significant waiting lists for this treatment, and services for people with BPD in rural and regional areas of our state are virtually non-existent.
I attended the first ever national Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Day at the Mental Illness Fellowship of South Australia in Wayville, back in October 2011. Since that time, I have become increasingly aware of just how much suffering due to lack of appropriate support and services there is for people living with BPD and their friends and families in the South Australian community.
Sadly I have seen young members of our community with a BPD diagnosis commit suicide. They were in contact with both public and private South Australian mental health services but that did not prevent these tragic deaths. Young lives lost. Dignity for Disability has asked questions without notice of both the previous and current health ministers about BPD and we are yet to receive a single answer to any question on this matter. I have been asking these questions for the past three years. I have also delivered a matters of interest speech on BPD and the response I receive is always from people with a BPD diagnosis and their family carers, thanking me for raising this ignored mental illness with the government.
I want to take the time to thank them as well for the information that they have shared with me that has allowed me and now my parliamentary colleague, the Hon. Tammy Franks, to continue this important fight. As this motion states, 1 to 4 four per cent of South Australians are experiencing borderline personality disorder at any one time but, as Ms Franks suggested, the numbers are actually greater than that when we consider the severe suffering and loss of family connection that family members and friends of people with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis can also experience.
It is high time and it is past time and we are obliged to acknowledge this and establish a specialised specific borderline personality disorder support and treatment service in this state, similar to the one in Victoria known as Spectrum. We have the model, the economic and societal savings have been proven, and we in South Australia are running out of time to meet our long-ignored obligation to people living and suffering every day with the stigma and mistreatment of borderline personality disorder in our communities. It is time to accept that, while borderline personality disorder can be life changing, and there is no doubt of that, it does not have to be a life sentence. I commend this motion to the chamber.
Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. G.A. Kandelaars.
