Kennedy wife and PDAN volunteer recruitment

[Guest guest]

Warning: The below is my opinion only, and not that of anyone else or any

organization.---Randi Kreger

__________________________________________________________

My husband--who knows about BPD only from living with me--showed me the

article below in which Kennedy Jr., friends he was " Trapped in an abusive

relationship " with a rageful, drug using and sometimes violent Carolyn Bessette.

The article is based on a book just out by someone named Klein. Obviously,

several BPD-like traits.

Of course, when someone is using drugs it is pretty hard to tell where drug

use and BPD begin and end. But it would be interesting to read the whole book.

Of course, people will think it's OK to talk about a celebrity's PHYSICAL

problems and their violent or cruel temperament (as Martha Steward biographers

have done), but it is NOT OK to theorize that it may not be a personality issue

but a potential personality DISORDER. I find it interesting that some

celebrities would rather have people think they are violent and abusive than

suggest

it's a treatable disorder they did not cause.

To me, like Princess , this points out that even the rich and famous may

not be getting the proper diagnosis and treatment. And I can't help but

wonder how my husband--armed with info learned by osmosis from me -- can see

these

things and point them out where out of the millions of clinicians out there,

it probably went undiagnosed.

Dual diagnosis (substance abuse with BPD) is so common--someone recently

quoted me the figure that half of all people with drug problems also have BPD.

The

substance abuse gets treated but not the underlying BPD, so, in my opinion,

many people return to drugs. The National Education Association for BPD

(NEABPD) is doing an entire conference about BPD and comorbid disorders next

fall in

NYC (see www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.com. (I went to last year's seminar

and although family members were present, I found that almost all

presentations were directed toward clinicians--for example, Marsha Linehan doing

a

technical presentation about her research with DBT treatment.)

Anyway--if Sally Field can go public about being bipolar, how long will it

take--if ever--that a celebrity comes forth about BPD? This is not an idle

question, for I've been told by an employee at National Institute for Mental

Health

that the squeaky wheels get the grease, and there's not a pip out there about

BPD. Or maybe a very small pip.

As an aside to this, If you would like to consider advocating for increased

awareness of BPD as it is out there in the real world (not just in clinician

offices), please consider volunteering for PDAN, the Personality Disorder

Awareness Network. Right now we are working on a short, basic booklet about BPD

written at a high school level that anyone can buy for themselves or others to

understand BPD. (Something you can give to your doctor, lawyer, teenager, person

with BPD, etc.) and we are working on a metastudy to determine the effect of

different BPD traits on minor children.

We currently need volunteers to help build a web site, a brochure or other

educational materials, and a variety of other tasks. We have someone to do the

design and technical part of the site, but I am looking for volunteers to help

write content--especially content for professionals who need to understand BPD

(clergy, medical doctors, lawyers, court personal, custody evaluators, etc.)

by interviewing someone in the field. (I'll probably make a formal request

later this month, but it also seemed fitting to add this here).

Other volunteer skills needed include article writing, organizational skills,

grant writing, clinical expertise, publicity (local and national consumer and

biz to biz), research and statistics and whatever other skills or services

you think you might be able to provide, such as cheap printing, illustration, w

hatever.

If this sounds like something you may want to do, please write me at

RandiBPD@.... Here's the article:

___________________________________________________________________

LOS ANGELES (June 30) - By the time they died in a 1999 plane crash, F.

Kennedy, Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette, were living a life of drugs,

separate beds and violence, according to a new book by Kennedy family biographer

Klein excerpted in Vanity Fair on Monday .In ''The Kennedy Curse: Why

Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years,'' Klein said that two

days before he died, Kennedy, the only son of assassinated U.S. President

F. Kennedy, told a friend his marriage was deteriorating.

''It's got to stop. Otherwise we're headed for divorce,'' Kennedy told the

friend in a call from the Stanhope Hotel, where Klein said he took refuge from

his wife's cocaine habit and violent temper.

''I want to have kids but whenever I raise the subject with Carolyn, she

turns away and refuses to have sex with me,'' Kennedy told the friend. He had

picked out a name, Flyn, for the son he dreamed of having, Klein reported.

Klein quoted Bessette's fashion industry friends as saying it was known she

was a heavy user of drugs, and that Kennedy caught her snorting lines of

cocaine with friends at the couple's New York apartment. ''You're a cokehead,''

Kennedy screamed at his wife.

A staff member from Kennedy's political magazine, '','' told of a

dinner in which Bessette made at least a half dozen trips to the bathroom,

returning to the table with white rings around her nostrils. ''We went from bar

to

bar, and she wanted to come over to my apartment, but I said no, because I knew

it would be an all-nighter,'' the friend said. ''I ... dropped her off at 3

a.m.''

The next morning, Kennedy asked why the staffer and his wife were out so

late. The staff member replied: ''A better question is why your wife didn't want

to go home.''

CHEATING HEART

According to friends, Kennedy worried that Carolyn was cheating on him with

old flame, Bergin, a ''Baywatch'' actor and former model of Calvin

Klein underwear. They continued their affair even after Bessette had moved in

with

Kennedy, Klein, a Vanity Fair contributing editor as well as Kennedy

biographer, said.

Although Bergin cut off the affair after Bessette's marriage, she continued

to taunt her husband with Bergin.

Klein said the actor also revealed Carolyn's violent side in an incident in

which Bessette got angry after seeing him light an ex-girlfriend's cigarette at

a bar.

She showed up at Bergin's door and threw two heavy candles through a window

and a mirror, shattering both. ''Then she knocked my television set and VCR

onto the floor and jumped on my VCR and squashed it,'' Bergin told Klein.

''I ran out of the apartment. I'm very athletic and fast, but she caught up

with me and started yelling at me and taunting me, calling me a baby.''

Kennedy's friends suspected that something similar happened to him when he

was rushed to an emergency room for an operation to repair a severed nerve.

Kennedy said the injury was an accident, but he had told friends that he felt

trapped in an abusive relationship. ''Carolyn was like a wild horse,'' the

acquaintance from told Klein. ''She had a trash mouth... She used to call

a fag all the time.''

Public scrutiny drove Bessette into depression, the friend said. She refused

to leave their apartment and spent long periods crying, telling friends that

she hated ''living in a fishbowl.'' Klein said Carolyn reportedly stormed out

of a marital counselor's office when her drug use was raised.

Klein said Bessette's self-absorption made her late for the fatal 1999 plane

ride with her husband and sister, who had arrived at the airport in New Jersey

while it was still light. The plane, piloted by Kennedy, went down in

darkness off the coast of Martha's Vineyard near Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Klein quotes a hair colorist named Colin Lively as saying he saw Carolyn

order a pedicurist to apply her toenail polish three times that day to match a

fabric she had brought to the salon. During the pedicure, her mobile phone rang

over and over, Lively told Klein. ''What?'' she said impatiently into the

phone. ''I told you I'm getting a pedicure.''

Reut14:50 06-30-03

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