Opinion ID: 2247066
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: Helene McDonald.

Text: Helene McDonald, a medical doctor and licensed psychiatrist, was appellant's next trial witness. She testified that she conducted a psychiatric evaluation of Monique, which spanned 12 hours over the course of three days, and had reviewed various items, including the 911 tape, appellant's interview with the police, certain medical records, the crime scene report, and follow-up reports by Gasparian and McNeal. Her conclusion was that Monique met the criteria for a borderline personality disorder. People suffering from this condition cannot tolerate being alone, rejected, or abandoned. In relationships, they tend to continuously repeat a cycle of idealizing their mate, getting scared of intimacy, and then devaluing the person and rejecting him or her before being rejected first. Persons with borderline personality disorder have terrible mood swings and are irritable, impulsive, and lack reasoning and judgment when in an enraged state. Often they will take steps, sometimes unconsciously, to hurt or humiliate the man or woman in their lives because they fear abandonment. McDonald stated that when appellant was grieving and withdrawn over the death of his friend, Monique felt abandoned and rejected. Monique told Mc-Donald that she invited Jack to go rollerblading to make appellant angry and jealous. Later she called 911 because she felt bad and wanted appellant to feel the way she did. She also told Mc-Donald that when appellant said he was going to break the car windows, she stated go ahead, happy to finally get a reaction out of him. Later at the police station, Monique believed that appellant would certainly divorce her at this point, so she created a scenario to make it appear appellant had been abusive to her in the past. McDonald stated that, in her opinion, Monique's condition of borderline personality disorder had a very large and important impact on the events of June 15, and Monique was not faking a borderline personality disorder. At the conclusion of McDonald's testimony, appellant rested.