Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight.

[elleng]

'Are you one of us?

The patient wanted to know, and her therapist — Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington, creator of a treatment used worldwide for severely suicidal people — had a ready answer. It was the one she always used to cut the question short, whether a patient asked it hopefully, accusingly or knowingly, having glimpsed the macramé of faded burns, cuts and welts on Dr. Linehan’s arms:

“You mean, have I suffered?”

“No, Marsha,” the patient replied, in an encounter last spring. “I mean one of us. Like us. Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html?ref=health

[BainsBane]

1. Yeah, she has Borderline Personality Disorder

but didn't disclose it when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy because she was concerned about not seeming objective.