PhD, Mental Health Nurse, Lecturer, Researcher, Writer. Interested in philosophy, 'personality disorder' and mental health care. Own views. #MHDeservesBetter
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The 'conceptual black hole of borderline personality disorder': how can BPD be not real mental illness but too unstable for therapy, described as not personality disorder but treated as only personality disorder, and also, borderline of what? Open access: doi.org/10.1080/01612840.202…
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“It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’”
—Aldous Huxley
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Warrender, D. (2026, June 11). Burning bridges and the potential of ashes: A regeneration for the verb of ‘mental health nursing’ [Conference presentation]. Skellern Lecture, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK. [Online] Available from: piped.video/Gf6OJhi25VA
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There is more to personality than Borderline Personality Disorder. Everyone has personality. Even people with ADHD and ADHD-like traits have personality.
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People say “you have to throw away the book.” But you have to own the book before you can throw it away.
For a therapist, it doesn’t mean “anything goes.” It means you’ve mastered your craft so fully that you no longer have to think about it.
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Thanks for your email, I hope to respond in a few weeks when I somehow have my life together despite changing nothing.
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Leaving Malta again after my second trip here in two weeks, delivering training on mentalizing approaches to mental health professionals. Great engagement and discussion from attendees. I stand by mentalization being a useful approach in any circumstances.
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Diagnoses are provisionally negotiated interpretations situated within evolving epistemologies. They are not meant to be used as a pillar of anybody’s identity.
Wrote about therapy culture, self-diagnosis, and what happens when we require pain to be labeled in order to take it seriously. @WSJFreeEx
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Interesting time in Oban joining the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland. Met a lot of people across a hugely diverse array of disciplines. Interesting conversations and project ideas.
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Regarding Diagnoses:
When we get too attached to a fixed story about who we are, we start spending enormous energy protecting it. We need others to agree with it, we feel threatened when they don't, and we stop being genuinely curious about our own experience.
#psychologicalflexibility
#ACT
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Dr Dan Warrender retweeted
The less people know about a subject, the simpler the answers seem. Cognitive science explains why.
We have two cognitive information processing systems. Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman called them System 1 and System 2.
👉 System 1 is quick, automatic, not fully conscious, and emotion-driven. It provides a false sense of certainty in the absence of real knowledge and understanding.
👉 System 2 is slow, deliberate, conscious, rational, and information-driven.
The more we know, the more likely System 2 is online— and the less willing we are to accept easy answers that “seem” right.
The less we know, the more likely we’re relying on System 1—and the simpler the answers seem.
This explains a lot of public discourse.
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Just leaving Malta after teaching Mentalizing Approaches for complex mental health problems to mental health staff. I have always found mentalization to be a simple yet subtle and nuanced concept, which can facilitate useful understandings and help scaffold our conversations.
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Check out
mentalhealthdeservesbetter.w…
And the work of @dan_warrender
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Getting a PhD is a long and difficult journey but it’s all worth it for the joy of interviewing students regarding their improper use of AI
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Delighted to join the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland. abertay.ac.uk/news/2026/aber…
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Dr Dan Warrender retweeted
Why can’t we instead be honest about what ADHD is—and what it is not—as psychiatrist @awaisaftab is here, in an @nytimes article from earlier this year?
Why the insistence on presenting it as an established neurological issue and confusing people?
nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opini…
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