"Why I sometimes overdose on medication"

I have BPD and I sometimes overdose on prescription medication.

I have had good and bad experiences. I really do think that Ambulance staff and Nurses/Drs should be more well informed about this illness.

People seem to think I do it for attention and that I have control over it. Let me get this straight, I do not overdose so that I can be treated like I'm a time waster from the ambulance staff, ignored by A&E staff and then shouted at when I try and leave.

This is not a choice I would make in the right frame of mind. My impulses are out of control and I become dissociated, I have racing thoughts, sometimes flashbacks from past experiences and the only way to get a bit of a break from my head is to knock myself out with prescription medication.

I know there are better ways of coping, but for now this is my way. It is an illness as much as any other and although I don't expect massive amounts of sympathy from staff who are over stretched and have had a lifetime's worth of misery in one day, I do expect that I get treated with respect and talked to like a normal human being.

Please can staff have training on this issue so that they learn that we are not all attention seeking, time wasting, difficult, manipulative people as many staff wrongly assume when they see a BPD diagnosis?