Dialectical behavior therapy of Angelina Jolie

Demographics of the Client (Age, Culture, Ethnicity)

Angelina Jolie Pitt is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian.

Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, United States

Birthdate: June 4, 1975

Ethnicity:

• 25% German

• 25% Slovak

• 25% French-Canadian (approximately)

• 12.5% Polish

• 12.5% Dutch

• 1/1024 Huron Native Canadian

An Academy Award-winning American actress, Angelina Jolie, is also a filmmaker and a humanitarian. She is also known as Angelina Jolie Pitt. Her parents are John Voight (Jonathan Vincent Voight), also an Academy Award winner, and actress Marcheline Bertrand (Marcia Lynne Bertrand). His brother is James Haven, and her uncles are Chip Taylor, a songwriter, and Barry Voight, a volcanologist. She is married to Brad Pitt who is a well-known actor, too. Her father is half German and half Slovakian, while her mother is half French-Canadian, one quarter Polish and one quarter Dutch. According to Ethnic Celebs (2008), Angelina is also 1/16384 Swiss-French and 1/1024 Huron Native Canadian.

A Brief History/Background-Childhood, Family Dynamics, Relationships

Angelina Jolie had been born in Los Angeles, U.S., to actors Marcheline Bertrand and Jon Voight. According to Udovich (1999), Angelina is the sibling of James Haven who is an actor, and niece of Chip Taylor, who is a singer-songwriter. Jacqueline Bisset and Maximillian Schell are her godparents. She happens to be of Slovak and German descent on his father's side, and French Canadian, German, and Dutch descent from her maternal's side. She said that she is part Iroquois like what her mother claims, too.

According to Van Meter (2002), her parents separated in 1976 wherein she and her brother lived with her mother who focused on raising them. It was her frequent watching of films with her mother that inspired her to become an actress rather than her father's successful acting career, although she played a small part in his film Lookin' to Get Out (1982) at the age of five. Her mother and her live-in partner Bill Day, a filmmaker, decided to move to Palisades, New York, when she was six years old. Five years later, they went back to Los Angeles, California. She trained for two years in Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and also took part in some stage productions after deciding that she really wanted to become an actress. Jolie felt isolated when she went to Beverly Hills High School where children of rich families study. She was extremely thin and was wearing glasses and braces that she became a target of teasing. She did modeling as her mother insisted, but it was unsuccessful. She became a "punk outsider" when she transferred to Moreno High School, wearing clothes that all black, moshing, and playing with knife with her boyfriend who lived with her. She stopped attending acting classes and took at-home course on embalming. She graduated from high school and started renting her own apartment at the age of sixteen. This was after she parted ways with her boyfriend, and before she went back to studying theater arts. In 2004, she recalled this moment in her life wherein she said, "I am still at heart -- and always will be -- just a punk kid with tattoos."

DSM-V Diagnosis and Justification for Your Diagnosis

There is a prevalent pattern of instability of self-image, affects, and interpersonal relationship, and pronounced impulsivity starting at early adulthood and present in various circumstances, as shown in at least five of the following:

• Distressed effort to avoid imagined or real desertion

• A marked pattern of strong and unstable interpersonal relationship, alternating between devaluation and idealization.

• Identity disturbance: marked and persistent unstable sense of self or self-image

• Impulsivity in at least two of the following: spending, substance abuse, sex, binge eating, reckless driving, which are known to potentially cause self-damage.

• Repeated suicidal behavior, threats, or gestures, or self-inflicting behavior

• Marked mood reactivity resulting to affective instability (e.g. irritability, severe, episodic dysphoria, or anxiety that usually lasts for a few hours to a few days in some cases.

• Long-term feeling of emptiness

• Intense, inappropriate anger or problem with controlling anger (e.g. frequent expression of anger, consistent anger, repeated physical fights)

• Temporary paranoid ideation related to stress or serious dissociative symptoms (American Pschiatric Association, 1994).

In particular, Angelina Jolie's diagnosis was possible Borderline Personality Disorder which is in Axis II Personality Disorder of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM-IV). Axis I are usually mood disorders and may be short-term (i.e. adjustment disorder, major depressive disorder). Axis II are harder to "change" as they are characterological disorders, ego-syntonic and more imbued. When she was a teenager, she found it hard to connect emotionally with other individuals, resulting to self-infliction. She once said that by ritually cutting herself and feeling the pain, she felt alive and some kind of release, that somehow it has been therapeutic for her. She also had eating disorder, insomnia, and experimented with drugs, wherein she had used every kind of drug, particularly heroin, by the age of 20. At the age of 19, she suffered bouts of depression and planned to commit suicide, and this happened again when she was 22 wherein she tried to hire a gunman to kill her. She also experienced staying for 72 hours at the psychiatric ward of UCLA Medical Center for nervous breakdown. Jolie's life became stable after two years when she adopted her first child wherein she said that she knew that she would never self-destruct again once she commit to Maddox.

Jolie's biological father left his family when she was less than one-year-old and since then their relationship had been dysfunctional. They would only meet sporadically, usually in front of the media. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) paved the way for their reconciliation, but their relationship fell apart again that she finally petitioned the court to have her surname "Voight" removed, and allow her use her middle name which is her stage name. On September 12, 2002, the name change was granted, followed by estranged Voight going into public and claiming that Jolie suffered from serious mental problems. This caused both Jolie's mother and brother to cut communication with his father. According to Simon (2011), they did not communicate for six-and-a-half years, but started fixing their relationship in their mother's wake in 2007, and publicly reconciled three years later.

3 Treatment Goals

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) will be used to treat BPD, and this centers on mindfulness or paying attention to the current emotion. DBT will help develop the skills needed to cut down self-destructive behavior, improve relationships, and manage distress and intense emotions. It wants to have a balance between changing and accepting behaviors. A problem-solving and proactive approach, DBT was specifically tailored to treat BPD. One-on-one therapy sessions, phone coaching on an as needed basis, and skills training by group are among the treatments that would be used. Considered to be the most studied treatment for BPD, DBT is also known to be the most effective. DBT's treatment goals focus on the following behaviors:

1. Life-threatening behaviors: suicide communications, suicidal ideation, and non-suicidal and suicidal self-infliction.

2. Therapy-interfering behaviors: cancelling appointment, tardiness in sessions, and being uncooperative in meeting treatment objectives.

3. Quality of life behaviors: relationship problems, mental disorders, housing or financial crises, or any other behavior that might hinder having a good quality of life (The Linehan Institute, 2016)

Client Script Using at Least 3 Interventions from DBT

• Goals include reducing behaviors that are life threatening, therapy interfering, and quality of life interfering, as well as enhancing behavioral skills. Possibly, in practice, a lot of DBT is done in connection to this primary stage.

• The secondary stage is targeted on patients in "quiet desperation" or those who have surpassed the more damaging behaviors. It aims at improving their experience by focusing on post-traumatic responses.

• According to Grohol (2016), stage three aims to help patients to move on to "ordinary unhappiness and happiness" by facing day-to-day problems.

There is actually a fourth stage and its aims is to overcome a feeling of incompleteness while developing a capacity for constant joy.

An Explanation of Why You Would Utilize Those Interventions with Your Client and Why This Client Is Appropriate for DBT Using At Least One Other Source Besides Your Text

Developed by psychologist Marsha M. Linehan in the late 1980s, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. It was developed to treat borderline personality disorder more effectively. Other mental health disorders are also being treated using this DBT since it was developed. Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT is appropriate for this patient because she suffers from BPD.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagsnotic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM -- IV) (4th ed.). Washington, DC: APA.

Ethnic Celebs. (2008, December 27). Angelina Jolie. Retrieved from Ethnic Celebs: http://ethnicelebs.com/angelina-jolie

Grohol, J. M. (2016, July 17). Dialectical Behavior Therapy in the Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/dialectical-behavior-therapy-in-the-treatment-of-borderline-personality-disorder/7/

Simon, B. (2011, November 27). Angelina Jolie on her father. Retrieved from CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7389734n&tag=segementExtraScroller;housing

The Linehan Institute. (2016, December). What is DBT? Retrieved from The Linehan Institute: http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm

Udovitch, M. (1999, August 19). The Devil in Miss Jolie. Retrieved from Rolling Stone: http://angelanna3.tripod.com/interviews1999/id5.html

Van Meter, J. (2002, April). Angelina Jolie: Body Beautiful. Retrieved from Vogue: http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/032602/page2.html