Expert on Mental Illness, Marsha Linehan, Reveals Her Own Fight

HARTFORD — Are you one of us?

The patient wanted to know, and her therapist — Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington, creator of a treatment used worldwide for severely suicidal people — had a ready answer. It was the one she always used to cut the question short, whether a patient asked it hopefully, accusingly or knowingly, having glimpsed the macramé of faded burns, cuts and welts on Dr. Linehan’s arms:

“You mean, have I suffered?”

“No, Marsha,” the patient replied, in an encounter last spring. “I mean one of us. Like us. Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope.”

“That did it,” said Dr. Linehan, 68, who told her story in public for the first time last week before an audience of friends, family and doctors at the Institute of Living, the Hartford clinic where she was first treated for extreme social withdrawal at age 17. “So many people have begged me to come forward, and I just thought — well, I have to do this. I owe it to them. I cannot die a coward.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Not just for "coming out," but for the struggles she went through in dealing with her own severe personality disorder.

Variants of her methodology are in widespread use in various places, including Correctional settings, and particularly for the condition known as Borderline Personality Disorder.

This really puts a human face on her and her methods, which are sort of a combination of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness meditation.