She recalls a time when she was 17-years-old, nearing the end of year 11. High school is hard for anyone. Every moment feels catastrophic, like one small misstep will spark the end of the world. Making friends feels like an Olympic sport, passing your classes is the uphill climb to the peak of Mount Everest. But for Caitlin* it was 10 times harder. Struggling with the stress of her studies, battling depression and unable to regulate her emotions, she had to take a step back from school. So, when her doctors told her she had borderline personality disorder, she felt as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Learning the constant mood swings, fights with friends and emotional outbursts weren’t her fault, was the validation she needed to start her road to recovery. The number of young Australians on the same frightening journey is surprising and it’s a nightmare both for them and their families.

Caitlin’s story may be unique to her but she isn’t alone. Bpd is a mental health condition characterised by intense emotions, mood instability and identity struggles, among other challenging symptoms. Between two and five percent of Australians live with this disorder; between 500,000 to 1 million people. Despite the number of Australians living with bpd, experts say awareness is lagging. Leaving people like Caitlin facing stigma, misdiagnosis and misunderstanding.

Now 21-years-old, she is studying social work at university and working hard to manage her diagnosis.

“It is a lot every day just to do daily tasks, which I am able to do now. I’m at university and I do have a job, it’s just a little harder for me than it is for other people without bpd,” she says.

People with bpd are often referred to as being in distress or experiencing moments of distress. This is often the result of an emotional trigger and can be very difficult for the individual.

This rings true for people like Caitlin who recalls what those moments of distress look and feel like for her.

“It’s very intense and I usually can’t stop myself from getting upset,” she says.

“You know it can lead to me crying or having a whole meltdown and it feels awful – it feels like the end of the world.”

According to mental health Occupational Therapist, Ms Virginia Pulker, people with bpd are more in tune with their emotions. She feels they possess a high emotional intelligence due to their depth of feeling.

“I think most people with BPD are highly sensitive, exquisitely sensitive and like all of us, lovable worthwhile humans,” she says.

“They see and feel everything and that’s a hard way to be in this world.”

Pulker works in private practice in Applecross. She specialises in treating people with bpd, complex trauma, neurodivergence and any sort of presentation of emotional regulations issues, primarily in teens and adults. 

She has been in the mental health field for a long time, having previously worked in government mental health services before turning to private practice. She says what drew her to going private and working specifically with disorders like bpd was seeing the stigma her clients faced.

“I think it fired up a feeling of social conscience for me, and this is a group of people who are really in a lot of pain and a lot of emotional suffering and can be helped,” she says.

Bpd is a disorder which cannot be treated by medications and is widely understood to be a lifelong disorder. The main treatment for bpd is a type of therapy called dialectical behavioural therapy, referred to as dbt.

Dbt in its conception was designed to be a comprehensive six-to-12-month course, consisting of weekly group training sessions and individual therapy sessions. There are only a handful of programs across Perth which are now run as 12-week sessions with weekly three-hour group training sessions and optional weekly therapy sessions. 

“They learn mindfulness skills and interpersonal skills, emotional regulation skills and distress tolerance skills, so skills for managing really severe emotional crisis or suicidality,” Pulker says.

One of the most common challenges for people with bpd is managing stable relationships. Due to their difficulty regulating emotions, people with bpd can often find it hard to connect with others in relationships.

“Learning how to regulate myself in relationships has been the most difficult part for me,” says Caitlin.

She says it’s overwhelming being in distress and if the people around her don’t understand it can get intense very quickly.

“It just gets really intense and if the other person also doesn’t really understand and doesn’t take a breath it can get really escalated,” she says.

Experts say there isn’t yet a definitive answer on what causes bpd. However, recent studies suggest it stems from emotional responses to childhood trauma. When an individual experiences emotional invalidation as a child it can alter the way they regulate their emotions in the future.

“One of the biggest barriers is stigma and being misunderstood and then it flows onto the family,” says Pulker.

This experience couldn’t be truer for mother of two Akira Gaynor.

In 2017, Akira Gaynor’s daughter Giorjia was diagnosed with bpd. This turned her world upside down when she had to become her 16-year-old daughter’s carer, as well as being her mum.

“I’ve kind of gone through spaces of providing day to day, almost 24-7 care on mostly the emotional levels which flows into physical needs,” she says.

“But now a lot of my care with her is based around, again, the emotional needs, problem-solving, helping her regulate when things become really distressing.”

Gaynor has raised her two daughters as a single parent, without any family to help her. She says she noticed from a young age her daughter was difficult to soothe and deeply emotional. But among other more challenging traits she says she noticed a creativity and high intelligence in Giorjia.

“She was reading at the age of three so there were things I thought were interesting but I just put it down to her personality and just being a super intelligent, creative human,” she says.

It wasn’t until Giorgia’s teen years when Gaynor knew something was going on. She had struggled with depression as a teen but after the diagnoses of bpd at 16 she was further given a late diagnosis of autism at the age of 20. 

MIFWA stands for the Mental Illness Fellowship of Western Australia and is an independent, community-based organisation which has been supporting people with mental health challenges for more than 35 years.

Akira Gaynor says she was struggling with the care of her daughter. She went to MIFWA and took some courses on being a carer.

During a distressing period for both Akira Gaynor and Giorjia, when they were both battling with poor mental health, she remembers contacting MIFWA for help.

She remembers how she became a co-facilitator. She was attending a workshop at MIFWA to become a better carer for her daughter, when she saw an advertisement looking for facilitators.

“I’ve always had quite an interest in health and wellbeing and personal development through an eclectic mix of different approaches,” she says.

Since joining MIFWA Gaynor has had the opportunity to work with people in similar situations to her. She says seeing others progress inspires her to keep moving forward.

“It’s like this level of empowerment to be able to kind of be more in the centre of the storm not all around the outside,” she says.

“Even the tiny little success stories where the relationship between the carer and the person they care for, something either shifts or there’s a little moment of connection.”

Gaynor says her daughter has come a long way in her mental health journey. She has since verbalised to her mum, she believes she wouldn’t be here without her, which to Akira Gaynor means everything.

“Everything in me wants to protect my daughter, and yet I can’t do it and it’s been the biggest challenge stepping back a little,” she says.

For many parents, like Gaynor, learning to step back is part of a painful but necessary process. But her work at MIFWA has helped her see she isn’t alone. Grace Munnee is a peer worker at MIFWA who works with the parents of children with mental health issues who come to MIFWA seeking help.

As part of Munnee’s work she contacts parents and provides them with whatever support they need. In addition to this she runs a BPD carer support group at MIFWA.   

Munnee’s daughter Heelema, now 26, was diagnosed with bpd when she was 16. She has five mental diagnosis including bpd, and as a teenager and young adult was in and out of hospital 22 times.

“Six of those times she was in hospital they said to me, I’m sorry we don’t think she’s going to survive this,” she says.

Grace Munnee found herself at MIFWA after five years of helping her daughter battle her mental health issues. They approached her for the position of peer worker twice – the first time she turned it down.

“I said I wouldn’t know what I was doing. I can’t help people,” Grace Munnee says.

She was offered the role once again and this time she accepted.

“My passion is to help those poor parents. Just telling them about my daughter when they ask, telling them about my faith when they ask, giving them hope,” she says.

Munnee struggled with helping her daughter during her early days of her diagnosis.

“It was like walking on eggshells. It was like being on a roller coaster and trying to keep off it,” she says.

She says her work at MIFWA changed her whole perspective on mental health. She recalls a training program she did at MIFWA called Building a Future, or BAF. She said it taught her the valuable lesson of separating the illness from the child and seeing them for who they are at their core.

“When she was abusing me and just going to hurt me I’d say, it’s just the illness, it’ll pass.”

In May 2025 a report by World Metrics showed around 35% of patients with bpd are misdiagnosed with anxiety or other mood disorders.

Virginia Pulker believes there isn’t enough information available for medical professionals such as herself to properly help people with bpd.

There aren’t any bpd specific clinics in Perth, and only a handful of psychiatric facilities offer treatment programs. When people in distress are turned away from emergency departments, Pulker says they don’t have many places to turn to.

“The resources are limited and people with bpd, they don’t necessarily do well at that interface. They’re often in crisis.”

Like Pulker, Akira Gaynor also feels there isn’t enough information or services out there for people with bpd. Having been a carer for her daughter for eight years, and working with MIFWA, she has seen first-hand how distressing bpd can be for the sufferer as well as the people around them.

She feels systematically, there isn’t enough support and treatment for people with all kinds of mental health diagnoses, but especially those heavily stigmatised like bpd.

“If there were more education and training and understanding and awareness throughout all systems, to be able to have the skills to support someone who can’t in the moment. It would be great,” she says.

Bpd is a highly stigmatised disorder which makes people like Caitlin feel misunderstood. She says she is constantly faced with words like “crazy” and finds people treat her differently when they learn about her bpd.

“Just having bpd doesn’t make you a bad person. If you’re a bad person with bpd, it’s because you’re a bad person, not because you have bpd,” she says.

“We’re not crazy, we just need a little bit more reassurance than other people, and that’s okay.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health you can contact Lifeline at 13 11 14, or the organisation’s online chat support service.

*To protect her privacy, our participant Caitlin asked that her surname be withheld.