The article suggests that her severe suicidal behavior and self-harm was at age 17, and then she was released from the hospital and attempted suicide one last time around age 20. Her religious transformational experience occured at age 21 in 1967 (prior to grad school) and then things improved from there, according to her account. I am not saying that she wasn't borderline or anything, but one hypothesis is that she outgrew this dysfunctional behavior as an adult. Research shows that there is not alot of continuity in mental illness from adolescence to adulthood, and someone whose last suicide attempt was at age 20 wouldn't be considered BPD unless they had met other criteria as well because of how young she was at the time. This is just a hypothesis. Having suicidal thoughts later on at times happens to many people with depression and is fairly common. I am even very reluctant to diagnose a 20-year-old with BPD to begin with because this is still not fully developed adults. The truth is we don't really know how much she suffered after age 20 and whether the behavior continued--we just know that the attempts and hospitalizations stopped at a young age, which suggests to me that age was a huge factor and the acceptance that came with that.
From the article:
"It was 1967, several years after she left the institute as a desperate 20-year-old whom doctors gave little chance of surviving outside the hospital. Survive she did, barely: there was at least one suicide attempt in Tulsa, when she first arrived home; and another episode after she moved to a Y.M.C.A. in Chicago to start over."
So, Linehan was 24 at the time of the religious incident and was older than 20 (although we don't know how old), and we know she had frequent suiciual thoughts in her 30's as well. Suicidal ideation is a lot less severe than actual attempts, but it's still serious--and hopefully not modal or "not serious" behavior/symptomology. I'm not denying that Linehan's issues were far worse when she was younger, but she's pretty open about not being "cured" of her BPD even by that religious experience, just that the self-harm/SA stopped.
Think of it this way--if someone came to SDN or a client/student/friend came to you and said they had been hospitalized for 2-3 years when they were 17-20, had an extensive history of self-harm and suicide attempts, and while they didn't have any recent SI/SA, they still had fairly frequent suicidual thoughts and some emotional liability, would you (generic you) be supportive of their plan to be a clinical psychologist? I'm guessing most would (and rightfully so) have serious concerns about that plan, even with no recent history of SI/SA.
...That's what makes this all so fascinating to me--that someone with Linehan's profile would be someone most people would have serious qualms about being a clinical psychologist and yet Linehan is incredibly successful and beyond that, revolutionized the way we treat suicidality, BPD, and other disorders. Even if she's primarily a researcher, I had a couple of professors who said that if you really wanted to see DBT practiced well, to watch tapes of Linehan practicing it, so she has notable skills as a clinician as well. Of course, she's certainly not the modal outcome for people with BPD (or even for clinical psychologists in general), and I'm not saying this means that we should purposefully recruit people with BPD to enter the field en masse, but it does kind of give me pause to think about how we view psychopathology and mental health stigma in this field.
I think it's more people trying to figure out how she was able to get through a very stressful career trajectory, which the article doesn't really elaborate on.
I would really love to hear more about this .
(Of course, none of my mentors apparently found psychology grad school to be stressful compared to undergrad, so maybe I'm in the minority here in finding that is?
😕)
As for the article...I have some concern that people will see the MeSearch and generalize that to all psychologists.
I'm of two minds about "me-search." I've always found it kind of ironic that "in-group" researchers are heavily encouraged in multicultural research, but in other areas, me-search is considered taboo. I suppose my research area could be considered to be in between the two; I research people with disabilities--primarily physical and sensory disabilities. I conceptualize people with disabilities as much more of a cultural/social group than a pathology group, although I've received some criticism from ethnic multicultural researchers for saying that before, so have at me, if you want.
😉 ). I do think it can provide some degree of insight and credible to your participants, but I really think people need to be very, very careful about generalizing their thoughts and experiences to everyone in that group, and I've known some multicultural psych researchers who didn't do a good of job of recognizing that. Having been both an "in-group" and an "out-group" researcher, I honestly think there are advantages and disadvantages to both and that a team that blends "out group" and "in group" researchers and/or consultants/partners might be ideal.
