Health professionals

DBT team

Towards building a national BPD training and professional development strategy

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a common mental illness. BPD is also a complex and serious psychiatric disorder with significant morbidity and mortality. Commonly one in five patients in mental health services are diagnosed with BPD. However the modern science of BPD has developed only in the last two and a half decades and therefore we have a large clinical workforce that is not familiar with the latest approaches to diagnosis and treatment of this complex disorder.

In 2017 the National Mental Health Commission granted funding to the Australian BPD Foundation to build a national BPD training strategy and upskill and engage clinicians working with people with Borderline Personality Disorder and their families. The Australian BPD Foundation, Spectrum: The Personality Disorder Service for Victoria and the Mental Health Professionals Network (MHPN) have collaborated to bring together a six part webinar series to upskill clinicians. As an adjunct to the webinar series a virtual library has been developed in order to assist clinicians access further resources that can be accessed online.

This Virtual Library was developed by Spectrum: The Personality Disorder Service for Victoria on behalf of the project initiated by the Australian BPD Foundation.