2011 Joan Farrell, Ph.D. leaves Indiana University School of Medicine and Larue Carter Hospital after 25 years. Dr. Farrell will now have more time to focus on local and international training and research in Group Schema Therapy (GST) and will resume a small psychotherapy practice at STIM in the near future. Her practice will include Self-therapy Group ST weekends for psychotherapists, conducted with Ida Shaw, MA. She maintains her adjunct professor appointment in the department of Psychology, School of Science at IUPUI and she is adjunct faculty at the University of Indianapolis as well. She will continue to provide training in schema therapy for BPD for graduate students in clinical psychology from these programs.

  After completing the Group Schema Therapy Treatment Manual this month, she will go on with Ida and other collaborators to additional book projects including a treatment manual for the Intensive BPD Schema Therapy Program and a workbook in schema therapy for BPD patients. Look for announcements.

The BPD Awareness Month event sponsored by the Center for BPD Treatment & Research, Larue Carter Hospital & NAMI IN was attended by approximately forty consumers, family or friends and mental health professionals. The group included the CEO of NAMI Indiana, Pam McConey, many graduates of the inpatient BASE program and the current BASE Program inpatients. There was a good deal of discussion and many questions after Dr. Farrell's presentation. This sort of educational event is one that we plan to repeat semiannually.  

BASE HOUSE CLOSES

 UNFORTUNATELY, DUE TO LACK OF FUNDS THIS LOCATION CLOSED 11-2010  

We still believe in the need for such a center, but have exhausted our ability to maintain it with our personal funds. We hope that some day state or federal funds will become available for such a project. We sadly close our doors at this time.

We believe that people recovering from BPD need a "home base" as they move from the stage in their treatment of intensive individual psychotherapy or hospitalization to the greater autonomy of group and peer support. Like others in recovery from mental illness, they need opportunities to try their skills with graduated support and reliable validation. Unfortunately, most "Clubhouse", Day Therapy and similar programs that could provide this assistance, exclude people with BPD. Consumers with BPD are pointing out that current evidence based treatment provides help in reducing the self-destructive and impulsive symptoms of BPD and keeping them out of hospitals, but they are still lonely, and if employed - underemployed for their education and skill level. A major role of BASE House would be to provide the needed foundation of support for people to move on in the world and create fulfilled lives. One way we hope to do this is to provide employment in various roles at the center - peer support specialists, reception and crisis counseling jobs.

 The center will also be a drop in place for those struggling with self-destructive impulses who may need a safe place to be briefly to prevent hospitalization. In the center that we are planning, professional staff will be available to evaluate safety needs and refer for additional support if necessary.

2010  This has been a very busy summer for exciting world conferences focused on BPD and Schema Therapy.

Beginning in June with the World Congress Association of Behavioral & Cognitive Therapy in Boston where Joan Farrell, Ph.D and Arnoud Arntz, Phd presented an invited Master Clinician Seminar: Group Schema Therapy for BPD. A collaboration of US, German and Dutch BPD Researchers presented two symposia chaired by Farrell and Arntz - “New International Research to Evaluate Schema Therapy Treatment & Theory: Borderline Personality Disorder & Beyond".

We were also invited to participate in the First International Congress on Borderline Personality Disorder Berlin, Germany July 2, 2010. Farrell & Shaw presented in the Practice Seminar Series: Group Schema Therapy for BPD. Farrell also participated in an international research symposium The summer ended with a second Berlin congress and the most important one for the ST world - International Society of Schema Therapy Annual Congress July 8-10. Farrell & Shaw presented a half-day workshop on Group ST and Farrell also gave one of the invited keynotes there: Group Schema Therapy: Catalyzing & Augmenting the Treatment of BPD.

Some of these presentations are available at www.ISST-online.com

Neuroimaging & BPD:

Where are we?