Gathering evidence to show BPD is mentally ill for court

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

So here I am. My lawyer has told me to ask friends, familly, neighbours to testify about rage fits, weird behaviours, me being distressed about it etc.

Has anyone here gone through this? What was the outcome?

[Indyan]

So here I am. My lawyer has told me to ask friends, familly, neighbours to testify about rage fits, weird behaviours, me being distressed about it etc.

Has anyone here gone through this? What was the outcome?

[Matt]

It may be hard to get others to speak up and paint the whole picture.  Usually BPD is a disorder of intimate relationships;  you may have seen her act out many times, but others probably haven't seen that side of her.

The best way to establish that somebody has BPD is to get objective psych evals like the MMPI-2.  It's very hard to fool - in fact, if someone tries to fool the test, the results may show that.  That's what happened with my wife - her results included "presented falsely" which means she lied to try to fool the test.  But it was still able to give the psychologist enough information to diagnose her with BPD and other stuff.

Do you have kids?  What ages?

[Indyan]

I don't think they ask us to take a test here in France.

Yes, I have 2 kids, one baby aged 9mo (his baby) and D10 (SD for him).

I was told D10 won't be questioned but I can provide evidence she's seeing a therapist because she's scared and traumatized

[Matt]

I don't think they ask us to take a test here in France.

Yes, I have 2 kids, one baby aged 9mo (his baby) and D10 (SD for him).

I was told D10 won't be questioned but I can provide evidence she's seeing a therapist because she's scared and traumatized

I don't know anything about the French system - ours in the US is based on English law so there may be some similarities between the US and UK but I think France has some different legal traditions.

Here, it's not standard for parents to be tested, but you can file a motion with the court to do that.  I filed a motion for the court to appoint a Custody Evaluator - a Ph.D. psychologist - and he asked us to take the MMPI-2.  Maybe you can find out what options you have based on how things work there.

Also, in our system, kids usually aren't questioned in court, but if there is a Custody Evaluator he can talk with the kids and anyone else who might have important information, and use anything relevant to make a recommendation.

It may be possible to subpoena your daughter's therapist, to get her input, or for the CE to talk with the T.