Foundations of Personality Disorders | The Centre

Session three in the Mental Health training series, Foundations of Personality Disorders provides practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to personality, personality development, and contemporary understandings of personality disorders. The training explores common presentations, particularly borderline, antisocial, and narcissistic personality disorders and offers practical, trauma-informed strategies for engagement, boundary setting, crisis response, and self-care. The session emphasises person-centred, recovery-oriented
approaches and highlights how patterns of coping develop over time in response to biological, relational, and environmental factors.

This session is designed for practitioners working across community services, child and family services, youth programs, mental health, psychosocial support and other frontline sectors where clients may present with personality disorder traits or diagnoses.

Learning outcomes

Participants completing this workshop will be able to:

• Describe personality and how it develops across the lifespan.
• Explain contemporary understandings of personality disorders and how they present in practice.
• Recognise stigma, myths, and misconceptions and apply person-centred, respectful language.
• Identify common features associated with borderline, antisocial, and narcissistic personality disorders.
• Outline biological, relational and environmental factors that contribute to personality disorder development.
• Apply trauma-informed, recovery-oriented approaches when supporting individuals with personality disorders.
• Reflect on personal responses and develop strategies for maintaining wellbeing, professional
  boundaries, and consistency in practice.