Borderlines Part 2: Treating the Most Common Personality Disorders

One of our Favorite Speakers Returns for an Update

Hanna McGoey, LMHC, CAP, has been in the mental health field for 30 years. She was a director for a major non-profit agency working with community mental health, substance abuse, delinquent adolescents and prison populations. Ms. McGoey then transitioned into private practice, where she has run her own mental health agency, Growing, Inc., for the last 20 years. Growing, Inc. specializes in trauma, substance abuse, and mental health disorders for individuals and couples. Hanna currently owns and operates an outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment agency, licensed by Department of Children & Families, that provides treatment and counseling via government contracts, affiliation agreements, private pay, managed care panels etc. Populations served: Dually diagnosed and the addiction recovering community along with court mandated populations (DUI/Probation).

One of our toughest populations

Personality disorders are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating markedly from those accepted by the individual’s culture. These patterns develop early, are inflexible, and are associated with significant distress or disability

Our most highly rated speaker from last season, Hanna McGoey, LMHC, will return for a deeper inquiry into the often misunderstood of chronic personality disorders and focus especially on treatment approaches with this difficult and perplexing client. She will provide special insight into what is referred to as the “Cluster B” group of personality disorders…Antisocial, Narcissistic, Borderline and Histrionic, and offer protocols for successful treatment. It is well documented in personality disorder research that people from one “cluster” often find another personality disorder from the same “cluster”. For example the relationship between the narcissistic personality disorder and the borderline disorder is fairly well documented historically in the literature but not always clear on reasons that these people find one another greater than statistics would predict. The bridge between treatment/healing and relationship can evolve naturally because of the subconscious attempt by the client to heal what is always happening in the romantic or “heart-relationship”. This is predictably true simultanesously in the clinical relationship with dramatic implications for treatment planning with this population.

Learning Objectives:

As a result of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify the most common types of personality disorders seen by mental health practitioners
• State clearly the identifying characteristics of these most common personality disorders
• Recognize the connections between members of like sub-groupings of the various types of styles
• Explain the developmental path for each of the sub-groupings
• Recognize co-occurring “Axis I” disorders that typically accompany most common personality disorders
• Construct basic treatment plans for the most common personality disorder sub-groupings