Burned-out psychologist Mary Zanarini, developer of the MSI for Borderline Personality Disorder, incorrectly calls SSI “social security disability income”. Her burn-out is so evident in how she talks about recovery, suggesting that some patients are “born competent”, with a derisive little laugh. In fact, as all research on psychotherapy suggests, the goodness-of-fit between therapist/patient—what psychiatrist Antonia New calls “the ability to develop a trusting relationship with a therapist“, predicts the outcome of the patient. It is paramount that psychotherapists believe in their patients, stresses DBT® developer Dr. Marsha Linehan.
Here’s more evidence of how burned out Dr. Zanarini is: she’s very excited about all of her studies on which she’s principal investigator, but she says for some patients, “death by suicide is always an option“. Dr. Zanarini, I’m excited about your fMRI study as well, but I hate to be the bearer of statistics here, but you shouldn’t acquiesce that suicide is an acceptable option for any patient. The answer to mental illness is mental healthcare. For borderlines, the statistic is ten per cent of patients complete suicide.
Mary Zanarini pretentiously speculates that psychiatry is the only field in medicine that wants to improve people’s life quality. In fact, the field of physical rehabilitation medicine, speculated by Spaulding-trained physiatrist and SCI subspecialist Kate Delaney, wants to improve disabled folks’s quality of life. She wrote to me in MyChart prior to the first Kate Date on my hamstrings that “I absolutely do not think that people with disabilities have an inherently lower quality of life. We are always interested in what your goals are and will work with you to improve quality of life.” Several days later, I was struck by the sheriff.
I have to wonder aloud to Dr. Zanarini: Of the ninety per cent of borderlines that are treated who don’t kill themselves, would you prefer that forty-five per cent go on a bunch of neuroleptics (and, not everyone gains weight on neuroleptics–I actually lost weight, and Kit has never appeared to gain weight in her videos and has said she doesn’t experience the metabolic side effects, and she’s had her schizoaffective disorder treated for years). As for the other forty-five per cent patients, Dr. Zanarini, people on Social Security benefits can and DO work! I have. Some folks on Supplemental Security Income have even become physicians and attorneys with equal access to higher education and Vocational Rehabilitation. (By the way, Dr. Zanarini, please ask that your interviews be captioned—you are by far the hardest BorderlinerNotes contributor/expert to speechread! Dr. Zanarini reports that “patients said she looked sad” when she gave them the borderline personality disorder diagnosis in a Jan 23, 2024 blog post for BPDVideo, but she said she realized that she was reinforcing the stigma.