MMTAL changes how we see ourselves. It helps us feel less like toxic monsters, teaches us more about our own experiences and the experiences of others with personality disorder diagnoses, and helps us learn to challenge stigma and educate others. It makes us feel seen, and heard, and gives a purpose to the trauma we have faced dealing with the stigma of our diagnosis and the challenges we have faced navigated the mental health system with such a stigmatised and misunderstood label. It gives us hope that life can be better and helps us help ourselves. We deliver workshops to many different health and social care students and workers and the sense of achievement after reading the overwhelming positive feedback forms is extremely validating. We’re able to effect change, not just for ourselves but for everyone who comes after us and has this label put on them. Watching each other grow and transform and stay well after months of involvement is a testament to the group. People with personality disorders are still discouraged from socialising with each other because “you’ll pick up bad habits from each other” but when this CAPS group is involved the opposite happens. We pick up good habits and help each other. It gives people with these diagnosis the chance to meet others like them and find positive relationships.
The work we do as a group is often called invaluable by the professionals we train, provide resources for and interact with. Many professionals tell us they have no other training on borderline personality disorder, and the work we have done and the workshops we deliver are used widely, for example by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and by newly qualified nurses at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. It is particularly important to have a group such as this at the moment in Edinburgh, as there are currently no tailored services provided for people with a BPD diagnosis. Trying to get the specialised care and support we need can feel like an impossible task, and without this group trying to challenge this lack of services, we worry that hundreds of people with this diagnosis in Edinburgh will be left unsupported and suffering. In Edinburgh at the moment, community mental health teams and other services are reluctant to engage with people with personality disorder diagnosis, and this makes this group all the more important because it provides a resource for people who otherwise may be failed and have no supportive environments at all. Without the work this group is doing to try and provide the services to people in Edinburgh they both need and are entitled to, we fear lives will be lost, and the extra pressure put on crisis services and general mental health services will compound harms to vulnerable people and make it impossible for professionals to effectively support us and other people like us.
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