Maybe it's because I haven't read many of the articles and I haven't watched any of the video, but BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) is not the first thing I'd label her with. I may be completely wrong. I feel like I'm somewhat attuned to that - because I am diagnosed BPD, come from a family of borderlines and have been in therapy with a Linehan-trained therapist for 7 years. Some people have described her affect as flat, and I don't know that I've ever met a borderline with flat affect, unless they were so ill they were suicidal or reckless (and I don't mean the type of reckless that is drugs around children). It's that opportunistic recklessness - "I'm gonna wreck my car and kill myself and you'll all be sorry!" That sort of thing.
Addiction and BPD absolutely go hand in hand. Maybe addiction to the number of drugs she's admitted taking could be coloring her personality. I do think she exhibits signs of mental illness, but to me, it's more like sociopathy. A lack of empathy. She chose her boyfriend over her child. Her injured child. I guess it could verge on psychopathy, but I don't know if I think she's smart enough to make people think she cares about them when she doesn't, and the criminality and deviancy that accompanies psychopathy isn't quite what we see here. No doubt we'll see psychologists or psychiatrists involved. I'd be interested in her actual diagnosis.
ETA: Most borderlines, regardless of their subtype, would be hysterical during this time. If they were completely innocent, they'd be hysterical. Face in every news camera, quotes in every news outlet, whatever. It's attention, it's "positive," and it's at least partially focused on you. If they were guilty, they'd also be hysterical. Making dramatic scenes to protest their innocence, challenging people to break down their story, etc. Even borderlines who are terrible mothers and abuse their children (Joan Crawford is an excellent example of what I'm talking about - she is long rumored to have been BPD) have some love for their child. What the borderline has a hard time with is attention being focused elsewhere. If you don't pay attention to me, you don't love me.
If anyone on this board is diagnosed with BPD, has a family member with BPD, or would simply like to ask questions about it, please feel free to contact me directly via the site. I am fairly well educated about my own illness and want others to understand how to live with it, manage it, or how to cope with someone who lives with it. My therapist tells me I know more about BPD than his students (who are in grad school). IMO, you can never be "cured" but you can manage it. My motto is "Embrace the crazy." You have to learn to live with who you are or else it will drive you insane.
Old school Axis II Cluster B representin', that's me.
