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Annual Meeting of New Zealand Health Professionals
Providing Services for People with Borderline Personality Disorder
Mentalisation is the capacity to grasp the mental states underlying human behaviour – to think about mental states as separate from but potentially causing actions. The exercise of this capacity promotes a number of critical developmental achievements: The sense of agency or "ownership" of one's own behaviour; the capacity for social reciprocity and empathy; the ability to regulate one's affects, to tolerate frustration and to set one's own goals and ideals; and the capacity to symbolise.
The 2006 Gathering will be a regional conference featuring three international keynote speakers – Jon Allen, Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy – each of whom has contributed ground-breaking perspectives on the understanding and treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. With three international speakers, the conference has been extended to 3 days to ensure adequate time for their presentations, as well as NZ papers.
Jon Allen’s publications on the role of trauma in BPD and depression are clear, scholarly reviews of the extensive literature in this area; while Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman have not only published widely regarding developmental psychology, attachment theory, neurobiology and BPD, they have developed a treatment approach based on this literature that emphasises a common element of all successful therapies - mentalisation. Published studies of this treatment approach report noteworthy clinical success in its use; and some of their conference presentations will introduce how the development of mentalisation is a key component of treatment success.
