Treating Students with Personality Disorders

Abstract Current restrictions on financing college and university mental health services have tended to limit psychotherapy to only a few sessions in the vast majority of cases, but very brief psychotherapy does not fit the needs of students with major emotional problems. “Referring out” such students may result merely in sustaining their problems because outside care is not affordable and/or too limited itself. Personality disorders epitomize the cost/care dilemma. Both providing really adequate care and denying it are costly. Inadequately treated students are likely to be disruptive to all concerned, including themselves. The author focuses this dilemma on borderline personality, defining these disorders, observing the potentials for violence and how it is so often enabled, and then addressing the both therapist and student psychodynamics. He concludes with observations about the enabling factor of campuses as breeding grounds for deviant behavior.