Borderline Personality Disorder: Course, Outcomes, Interventions – Saturday, March 24, 2007

Kenneth R. Silk, MD Professor, Director, Personality Disorders Program
Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Health System

Michelle Riba, MS, MD Professor and Associate Chair, Dept. of Psychiatry, University of Michigan

Mary C. Zanarini, EdD, is Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Adult Development at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Zanarini earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Harvard College, later completing a clinical and research fellowship in Psychology in the Psychosocial Research Program at McLean Hospital.

Dr. Zanarini is Chair of the NIMH Workgroup for the Development of Guidelines for Treatment Research on BPD and Chair of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry Task Force on Personality Disorders. An active researcher, she is currently Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on three NIMH-funded studies: two investigating the long-term course of BPD and one investigating the genetics of BPD. Through her research, she has developed measures to assess various aspects of borderline psychopathology such as the Diagnostic Interview for Personality Disorders and the Zanarini Rating Scale for DSM-IV Borderline Personality Disorder. The National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder presented her with the Herb Pardes Senior Investigator Award in 2005.

Widely published, Dr. Zanarini is a reviewer or editorial board member of numerous scientific journals, including Archive of General Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Personality Disorders, and Biological Psychiatry. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders, the Association for Clinical Psychosocial Research, and the Association for Psychological Science.

Professor Paul Links, of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto is the incumbent of the Arthur Sommer Rotenberg Chair in Suicide Studies; the first academic Chair in North America dedicated to suicide research. Dr. Links has formed a team of researchers dedicated to the study of suicide, one of the leading causes of death for people under 35 years of age.

Dr. Links is the Deputy Chief of Psychiatry of the St. Michael’s Hospital’s Mental Health Service. In addition to the Chair, he continues with his clinical work with individuals at risk for suicide.

He has published over 75 articles in scientific journals and two books. As a principal investigator he has received research grants from many agencies including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Health and Welfare Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Health and the Ontario Mental Health Foundation. Dr. Links is the President of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.

Dr. Links’ clinical experience and expertise developed from working with both acutely suicidal and persistently suicidal patients (those who face a life-and-death struggle on a daily basis and are at high risk of taking their own lives).

Dr. Yeomans is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Director of Training at the Personality Disorders Institute of Weill-Cornell, and Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalysis. Other positions included Unit Chief of the Psychodynamic Unit for Borderline Conditions at the New York Hospital-Westchester Division. More recently, Dr. Yeomans has become Director of the Personality Studies Institute in Manhattan. He has participated in establishing training programs for psychodynamic therapy of personality disorders in numerous other sites in North America and Europe.He has authored and co-authored numerous articles and several books on psychotherapy research and technique, including, with Drs. Kernberg and Clarkin, A Primer on Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for the Borderline Patient, and Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality.

Dr. Silk received his B.A. in Biology from Brandeis University, his M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He did his psychiatry residency at Yale. He is currently Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School. Since 1986, he has been Director, Personality Disorders Program.Dr. Silk has published close to 75 scientific articles and book chapters. He edited Biological and Neurobehavioral Studies of Borderline Personality Disorder (American Psychiatric Press, 1994) and Biology of Personality Disorders (1998) in the APA’s Annual Review of Psychiatry. He co-authored with Allan Tasman and Michelle ba The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Pharmacotherapy: Improving Treatment Effectiveness (Guilford). He is currently in the process of co-editing with Peter Tyrer, The Cambridge University Press Textbook of Effective Treatments in Psychiatry that hopefully will be published in the late summer/early fall of 2007.

He is Secretary-Treasurer of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. He is a Past-President and Treasurer of the Association for Research in Personality Disorders. He is immediate Past President of the Michigan Psychiatric Society and serves on the Annual Meeting Scientific Program Committee for the American Psychiatric Association.

Dr. Silk worked for 20 years on inpatient units. He became Chief, Adult Services, at University of Michigan, in 1991 and Associate Chair in 1994. He held both positions until January of 2006.

Dr. Silk currently is doing PET research, studying mu-opioid receptor activation in patients with borderline personality disorder in response to induced sadness (as a paradigm of psychological pain) as well as in response to physical pain. The findings in these studies will be compared to the findings in depressed outpatients. Dr. Silk has received funding from the Borderline Personality Disorders Research Foundation and the NIMH for these projects.

Dr. Silk has, throughout his career, been an active clinician and teacher. His primary interest has always been the treatment and management of severely ill patients and the problems that they present to clinicians in the clinical arena.

Perry D. Hoffman, Ph.D. is on the voluntary faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is co-designer of the 12-week education course for families, Family Connections, which is available in many locations both in the United States as well as other countries. Dr Hoffman has several grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) with a focus on families who have a relative with borderline personality disorder. She is also Co-Director of the five-year NIMH-funded Family Perspectives on Borderline Personality Conferences. Dr. Hoffman is a co editor, with John G. Gunderson, MD, of the book Understanding and Treating Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for Professionals and Family Members, published by the American Psychiatric Press.