Here is a scary statistic for those of us with Borderline Personality Disorder, according to UK national statistics BPD rates among both male and female inmates have been estimated at 12 to 30 percent! Sadly many of us with BPD will indeed spend some time incarcerated as common BPD symptoms like ‘Explosive Anger‘ or ‘Extreme Emotional Swings‘ will cause us to do things self-destructive in nature. So as you might imagine any incarcerated person with BPD (male and female) will have highly complex needs that the probationary, or prison services simply can’t offer. That is where the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway comes into it…
Set up in 2015 by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), this side-service aims to provide a pathway of psychologically informed services but is only given in the most “complex cases, with the most significant levels of dysfunction, which cause the greatest challenges for staff and services“. Sadly it is only available in England, but there are other services similar to this elsewhere.
The idea of this service is to help inmates with BPD to reduce their levels of reoffending as well as improving the skills, confidence and attitudes of staff working with offenders who have BPD. On paper, this is a good idea, but sadly results of this program have not been as high as many would have liked, but this could well be down to the low numbers of take-up by inmates. Sadly on a negative note, the newsletters about this service seem to have stopped as of April 2018 (but I am not sure why as the services still seems to be operating, just not visibly online).
The reason we are bringing this to you is that it could be a valuable resource if you find yourself or someone you know incarcerated you might be able to reach out and get some help with this service. When you are that low down in both mind and spirit sometimes any amount of help is welcomed. Or, you can simply talk to us here on this site.
