Book Review of "Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for the Newly Diagnosed" by Alexander L. Chapman, Kim L. Gratz

Overall, the book isn't bad. However, because I'm already a nurse and have worked with psych patients, I already knew most of the information in the book. It was a good refresher but it was obviously written for someone who is newly diagnosed with BPD. But even for someone who is newly diagnosed, I still thought it was too basic.

The style of the book overall was good. It describes what BPD is, it describes various treatments that include talk therapy and medication therapy. I did like that it was recommended that talk therapy be included if one is also in medication therapy. In my opinion, it's crucial for every patient with a mental health disorder receiving mediation therapy to seek talk therapy.

Some of the things I would have liked to be included in the book was more description of the different medications. Almost to the degree that they different types of talk therapy were described. Not to the degree of a drug guide perhaps but just a bit more detail of each one instead. I would have like more description of the symptoms, more information about onset of symptoms and when would be a good time for someone to seek help. I would have like more case study examples where the patients are NOT self-harming or suicidal as well. As it is one symptom of nine, and one needs to have five of the nine, there must be many case studies available where patients don't have this symptom at all.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in return for a honest review. One other thing I will include in the notes to the publisher and author which I think people should know in advance is that this book comes in PDF form and not an ePub form. I personally read everything on my iPhone where PDF books are difficult to read even after increasing the font. One still has to increase the size of the page with every page turn which slows down the reading process. I was able to convert the PDF to an ePub file. However, the file converted to a badly formatted ePub book. It might be good if NetGalley actually increased the options for the readers or of NetGalley made it so all books are in ePub form for non-Kindle users.

I give it three of five stars. For me, three stars signifies a rating of "Good."