Emotional Intensity awareness

There have been explorations of alternative names for Borderline Personality Disorder and they chose Emotional Intensity Disorder to highlight the central feature of heightened emotional sensitivity and reactivity

EID awareness month will commence in March 2016 with a number of education sessions for multi-disciplinary teams and evening sessions to provide service users and carers with accurate and up to date information as well as to inform about the help available for EID.

The purpose of the staff sessions will be to highlight EID traits in different age groups, research studies, lessons learnt from RCA reports, neurobiology findings and attachment, and different therapy approaches, such as Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, System Training Emotional Predictability and problem solving, Mentalization Based Therapy and trauma skills work as well as art therapies. Service users will also be there to talk about their personal experiences.

This idea was developed by Consultant Psychiatrist Dr K Gintalaite-Bieliauskiene who works closely with EID and together with EI team wants to improve the service these people receive. Emotional Intensity Team Lead Gemma Gowing and Clinical Psychologist Dr Kate Littler have also been involved in developing the month’s events. This is supported by Dr Dietric Clinical Director and A Schembri-Wismayer PTS lead in NSom.

Dr Gintalaite-Bieliauskiene said “Despite the fact that information about EID has increased dramatically in the last few years, I believe that there is a need and interest to enhance our knowledge in this area. We want to raise awareness, share the hope, and spread the belief with other teams that people with EID deserve compassionate effective treatment, that they are taken seriously, and that their distress is significant.”

It is hoped that EID Awareness Month will become a tradition in the locality and ultimately across the trust.