On Wednesday October 17, 2018, ON-BPD held its first Annual General Meeting (AGM) since incorporating last year.  The organization’s President, Michele Langlois, presided over the meeting and provided members with an update of our accomplishments and described some of our upcoming initiatives, including TeleConnections, which will provide families in rural areas outside Ottawa the opportunity to take the Family Connections™ program by teleconference.

During the meeting new and existing Board members were either voted in or reaffirmed to office by members as follows:

President – Michele Langlois (reaffirmed)

Past President – Winston Revie

Vice-President – Karen Hanna (reaffirmed)

Treasurer – Kim Finnagin (new)

Secretary – Danielle Langlois (reaffirmed)

Director of Communications – Hamida Rahim (new)

Director of Intake and Memberships – Madonna Nevitt (reaffirmed)

Following the AGM, Dr. Ronald Fraser of the McGill University Health Centre presented a Public Lecture on “Stepped Care for Borderline Personality Disorder”, where he discussed the differences in therapy between short-term and extended care clinical options and the findings relative to success factors for each. 

Dr. Fraser provided participants with statistics demonstrating the success factors realized for patients, comprised of young adults who showed a high degree of emotional dysregulation, self-harming behaviours and substance abuse problems and who had taken short-term clinical therapy.  Dr. Fraser indicated that these patients demonstrated a marked decrease in suicide and self-harm post treatment. For further information on the Stepped Care Program, here is a link: https://www.on-bpd.ca/en/system/files/stepped_care_book.pdf

The public lecture was a great success, and participants were grateful for the information provided by Dr. Fraser about treatment options available to persons with BPD.

ON-BPD would like to thank members and participants who attended the AGM and Public Lecture, for their support and for making the event a great success!

To continue the discussion and provide information to the community on treatment options for BPD patients, ON-BPD will be having another Public Lecture, on November 21, 2018, where our featured public speakers will be Dr. Deanna Mercer and Helen Gottfried-UnRuh, who will summarize recent BPD research on diagnosis and treatment available in Ottawa.  This will be followed by a facilitated discussion of what family members and people with BPD feel are priorities for treatment of BPD in Ottawa.  For details, here is a link:

https://on-bpd.ca/en/stepped-care-borderline-personality-disorder-ottawa...