Alexis is a 32-year old woman who comes to you for treatment. She states that the reason she is there is to get her anger under control, and that in her last several relationships with men, she has been guilty of hitting her boyfriends and/or throwing things at them. She states that she doesn’t know why she does this because she ‘really loved all of them.’ During the course of your conversation, you discover that she has been married and divorced three times, and in the last year, has had 4 ‘serious’ relationships. Also, she tells you that she has had two past suicide attempts (pill overdoses) in response to ‘bad breakups’ with various boyfriends and husbands. Alexis is also both a compulsive shopper and compulsive eater. She has been known to max out her credit cards on shopping binges, and she has a habit of binging and purging. She states that she mostly engages in these kinds of behavior when her relationships are ‘getting bad.’ She tells you that when she is in a relationship, it’s very intense and that her whole world looks brighter, yet when the relationship begins to crumble, she goes through periods of intense depression and suicidal thoughts and has even resorted, more than once, to falsely telling her husband/boyfriend that she was pregnant in order to try to salvage the relationship. She states that she has two goals in therapy: to get a handle on her anger issues and to try to resolve these feelings of intense emptiness she has.
Alexis is exhibiting classic symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder and meets most of the criteria outlined in the DSM 5.
Think about what your next steps are to treat Alexis.
After having read the case study, compose 2,000 word paper that thoroughly answers the following questions:
1. Which psychological tests, if any, would you administer to this patient, and why? Be sure to use research to support your answers.
2. If given the choice, would you apply Freud’s, Erikson’s, Adler’s, or Jung’s theory of personality to describe this patient? Why? Which theory do you feel fits best? Again, be sure to back up your answers with research.
3. In terms of biological traits, which ones might fit best with this patient? Why?
4. What about sexual identity traits?
5. Would you choose to treat this patient behaviorally, cognitively, or humanistically? Why?
6. Which prominent personality traits does this patient appear to exhibit?
7. Provide a summary of your findings and a rudimentary treatment plan for this patient. Be sure to explain your intent.
Your paper should have a title page and a page listing all references and should be formatted in the APA style. In addition, it should include an introduction and conclusion. In the introduction you should provide a brief overview of the patient and your method of treatment to follow.
In the body of the essay you should include a method’s section (here you will describe the way in which you will collect information from the patient from personality tests and other assessments, and how you will deliver your treatment), and an expected result’s section (based on your method of assessment and therapy, what do you expect to happen with the patient?).
