Skepticism

Homeopathy and BPD don’t mix

I have an interest in BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). For today’s post, I thought I’d see what homeopaths had to say about it.

Here’s an old (2003) article on treating psychiatric patients in your homeopathic practice.

It was actually hard to find. My initial searches all led to definitions of BPD and mainstream treatments. Example. A good sign overall for those looking for information through Google.

I stepped it up a notch and went looking for [homeopathic borderline personality disorder remedy] which is how I found the above sign.

Taking case studies on page 2 appears to make sense in general if you’re treating somebody, except item 10 “10. Be aware of indications of animal, plant and mineral characteristics.” I’m sure that means something to homeopaths, but I certainly hope most of the patients have mainly animal, rather than plant or mineral characteristics.

The article lists Depressed, Bipolar, Anxious, OCD, BPD and schizophrenic patients as “respond well to homeopathic treatment.” I’m not even going to argue that point, intstead point out that on page 4, they contradict themselves about BPD patients, saying “The sooner you recognize the situation, the better it is to refer the patient” Essentially, don’t deal with these people, they’re unmanageable.

Well, I feel a small bit of misplaced pride that homeopaths don’t like to treat people with BPD. Or at least these homeopaths. Something they admit they can’t treat! Success. So what if it means nobody else wants to deal with you either, at least the placebo doesn’t work.

While doing more so-called research, I came upon a
testimonial
It says that homeopathy works great for BPD. (alongside counseling and CBT) Oh wait. Counseling and CBT are the main ways to treat BPD. Hmmm…….

This reminds me of the first friend I knew who tried homeopathy. He was really into Dungeons and Dragons and things like that. (we were about 15, also) He said he thought it was a really cool type of medicine because it was Just Like Magic. I think that is a pretty good explanation for the supposed mechanism. I will forever associate homeopathy and purple magic missiles.

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6 Comments

  1. Hell a lot of normal therapists refer BPD to others. There aren't any psychopharm drugs that are shown to be effective and since their main problem is with obsessing over social relationships, therapy itself is tricky. I know one therapist who had to drop a BPD patient and get a restraining order against them.

    It's a rather abstruse diagnosis anyways. Not as clear cut to make as bipolar (not that bipolar is all that clear cut either).

    In which case, I'm not surprised that people diagnosed with BPD try out homeopathy and other alt meds. With no official drugs and a limited number of actual therapists who have a clue about the condition. It's also unsurprising that homeopathy fails and smart homeopaths don't even attempt to apply their magic missiles on them.

    @mikhail BPD is not multiple personality disorder.

  2. … He said he thought it was a really cool type of medicine because it was Just Like Magic.

    The exact definition of why people believe homopathy works is "sympathetic magic". Like the way bits of your hair or nails are supposed to still have a link with the person they came from in voodoo.

    The magic link is to the substances the water used to be in contact with. Never mind that there's nothing of the original substance left, the water touched it, so it's now been imbued with the substances "magical essence".

    They may call it by many other names, some more scientific or rational sounding than "magic", but it all boils down to the magical essence.

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