Sexual relationships and sexual risk-taking in the context of living with, and recovering from, BPD: service user priorities for care

Maintaining sexual intimacy or negotiating sexual safety can be made difficult by symptoms, medication side-effects, and mental illness stigma. This project is the first to explore how people living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) understand the role of sexual relationships and sexual risk-taking in their experience of, and recovery from, BPD and to identify priorities for care. BPD is a serious and prevalent mental health difficulty which is characterised by difficulty regulating emotions, sensitivity to being rejected or abandoned, and difficulty understanding one’s own and others’ thoughts, feelings and wishes. These features can make forming healthy intimate relationships challenging, yet current knowledge about sexual relationships in the context of living with, and recovering from, BPD is limited.

Working across sites in Australia and the UK, the successful candidate will receive rigorous training in research methods and project management and will be responsible for conducting four studies: i) an integrative review of existing evidence adopting a relational lens; ii) an online questionnaire to identify service users’ priorities for information and care; iii) arts-based qualitative interviews with adults with BPD to elicit rich contextual experiences of negotiating sexual intimacy, relationships and safety in the context of BPD; and vi) interviews with mental health professionals to explore how best to embed key findings into education, training and practice. Ensuring that the research captures the experiences of diverse populations – including LGBTQIA+, minoritized ethnic groups, and working class populations – will be an essential part of the studentship.

Working in the UK with Dr Hannah Frith and Dr Cassie Hazell at the University of Surrey, and with Professor Brin Grenyer at the University of Wollongong in Australia, the studentship offers a distinctive opportunity to compare Australian/UK cultural contexts with differing sexual norms, mental health systems and service user support systems.

Supervisors

• Dr Hannah Frith
• Dr Cassie M Hazell
• Professor Brin Grenyer

Open to UK and international candidates.

Applicants are expected to hold a minimum of an upper second-class honours degree (65 per cent or above) in psychology (or a related discipline) and a masters degree in a relevant subject with a pass of 65 per cent or above.

IELTS Academic: 6.5 or above (or equivalent) with 6.0 in each individual category.