499 Posts
239 Posts
That thought crossed my mind too, Spazzy Nurse, but people with BPD can be dissociative too and with DID there is usually pretty horrific childhood abuse. Now it's possible that there was abuse going on and the family was able to cover it up or were oblivious to it. The OP said the girl was very attached to her mom, so I would wonder if it was "attached" as in a healthy relationship, "attached" as in a relationship with poor boundaries, or "attached" as in mom didn't dare let the girl out of her sight any more than absolutely necessary for fear someone would find out what went on at home.
I think it is possible for just about anyone to dissociate if they witness or commit a horrific act.
6 Posts
thanks for the reviews.
i'm not exactly from the medical side so didn't understand the dissociatin u mentioned. when they explained "attached" it looked like being more affectionate to mom than dad and siblings. and about the abuse part now we have some reason to believe so... whatever all i can tell u is- its a pretty complicated case.we are trying to figure out if they are avoiding a legal issue by stating that she is mentally unstable!
239 Posts
Perhaps I should have asked this before: What exactly is your involvement in this case? I assumed it was something you read about in a newspaper or something and were just curious about. If you have an official or personal involvement, you should be seeking information from a mental health professional who has all the known facts about the case, not posing the question on an anonymous discussion board where anyone with any level of expertise (or none at all) can answer. And to go back to your first post, I'd have to say that very few of us have come across a case of a child murdering a parent at all and I doubt anyone has experienced more than one.
That said, dissociation is where someone "splits off" certain mental contents from their consciousness. They may appear to be functioning normally, but literally aren't "all there." Dissociative states can include sleepwalking (consciousness is absent), acting bizarrely (judegment and impulse control are absent), amnesia (memory is absent), and dissociative identity disorder (eg "Sybil" and "Eve"). People with borderline personality disorder can have dissociative episodes.
While you aren't in the health profession, if you have some involvement and this isn't just something you've read about in a paper, you need to be careful to protect the confidentiality of this child. You may not have the professional duty to do so, but it would be the ethical thing to do. If you feel that you have betrayed information that is not available to the public, you might want to contact one of the moderators and ask to have this thread deleted (or may be able to do it yourself, I'm not sure. On some boards if the original poster deletes the beginning post, then the whole thread is deleted; on others it isn't). Even if her name isn't the one you've given, there are still enough details that someone could conceivably identify the case you're talking about. It might be a very slim chance, but the internet makes the world a smaller place.
normj
37 Posts
1) Nothing about your post points to Borderline Personality Disorder ... read the DSM-IV criteria for this disorder to learn more ...
2) See above #1 ... if she is leading a "pefectly normal life" then she cannot have BPD per the criteria delineated in the DSM-IV ...
Not to be dismissive, but I think you may be misunderstanding BPD ... check http://www.bpdcentral.com/resources/basics/main.shtml for a decent intro ...