Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy for DSM-IV Personality Disorders: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Abstract
This study evaluated the efficacy and long-term effectiveness of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) in the treatment of patients with DSM-IV personality disorders (PD). Twenty-seven patients with PD were randomized to treatment with ISTDP or a minimal-contact, delayed-treatment control condition. ISTDP-treated patients improved significantly more than controls on all primary outcome indices, reaching the normal ranges on both the brief symptom inventory (1.51-0.51, p < 0.001) and inventory of interpersonal problems (1.56-0.67, p < 0.001). When control patients were treated, they experienced benefits similar to the initial treatment group. In long-term follow-up, the whole group maintained their gains and had an 83.3% reduction of personality disorder diagnoses. Treatment costs were thrice offset by reductions in medication and disability payments. This preliminary study of ISTDP suggests it is efficacious and cost-effective in the treatment of PD. Limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In clinical practice, people offered treatment usually meet diagnostic criteria for several categories of personality disorders.
“in clinical practice people offered treatment usually meet diagnostic criteria for several categories of personality disorders”
From Personality disorder: a new global perspective (2010) · cites this paper as [39]
Cites
The brief symptom inventory: an introductory report.
Derogatis, L. R., & Melisaratos, N. (1983) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291700048017 · Cited by 6,650 · see citing works
Mediators and Mechanisms of Change in Psychotherapy Research
Kazdin, A. E. (2007) · Annual Review of Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.3.022806.091432 · Cited by 2,504 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Such a study may contribute to ongoing research efforts to elucidate key therapeutic ingredients as they appear across psychotherapy models (Ablon et al., 2006; Kazdin, 2007 ).”
Inventory of interpersonal problems: Psychometric properties and clinical applications.
Horowitz, L. M., Rosenberg, S. E., Baer, B. A., Ureño, G., & Villaseñor, V. S. (1988) · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-006x.56.6.885 · Cited by 2,026 · see citing works
The prevalence of DSM-IV personality disorders in psychiatric outpatients
Zimmerman, M., Rothschild, L., & Chelminski, I. (2005) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.162.10.1911 · Cited by 825 · cited 1× · see citing works
“These 3 diagnoses were also the most common found in a recent study of PD incidence in psychi- atric outpatients (Zimmerman et al., 2005).”
Treatment utilization by patients with personality disorders
Bender, D. S., Dolan, R. T., Skodol, A. E., Sanislow, C. A., Dyck, I. R., McGlashan, T. H., Shea, M. T., Zanarini, M. C., Oldham, J. M., & Gunderson, J. G. (2001) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.158.2.295 · Cited by 779 · see citing works
Svartberg, M., Stiles, T. C., & Seltzer, M. H. (2004) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.161.5.810 · Cited by 398 · see citing works
Short-term psychotherapy of personality disorders
(1994) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.151.2.190 · Cited by 251 · see citing works
The cost-effectiveness of short-term dynamic psychotherapy
Abbass, A. A. (2003) · Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research · doi:10.1586/14737167.3.5.535 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention.
Roberts, B. W., Luo, J., Briley, D. A., Chow, P. I., Su, R., & Hill, P. L. (2017) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000088 · Cited by 1,047 · see citing works
Psychological therapies for people with borderline personality disorder.
Stoffers-Winterling, J. M., Völlm, B. A., Rücker, G., Timmer, A., Huband, N., & Lieb, K. (2012) · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · doi:10.1002/14651858.cd005652.pub2 · Cited by 895 · see citing works
Avoidant Personality Disorder: a Current Review
Weinbrecht, A., Schulze, L., Boettcher, J., & Renneberg, B. (2016) · Current Psychiatry Reports · doi:10.1007/s11920-016-0665-6 · Cited by 110 · see citing works
Personality disorder: a new global perspective
TYRER, P., MULDER, R., CRAWFORD, M., NEWTON-HOWES, G., SIMONSEN, E., NDETEI, D., KOLDOBSKY, N., FOSSATI, A., MBATIA, J., & BARRETT, B. (2010) · World Psychiatry · doi:10.1002/j.2051-5545.2010.tb00270.x · Cited by 102 · see citing works
Moldovan, R., Cobeanu, O., & David, D. (2013) · Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy · doi:10.1002/cpp.1814 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
- Authors
- Abbass, A., Sheldon, A., Gyra, J., & Kalpin, A.
- Affiliations
- Dalhousie University (CA)
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Abbass, Allan
- ORCID
- Abbass, Allan
- Venue
- Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease
- Published
- 2008-03
- Volume
- 196
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 211-216
- ISSN
- 0022-3018 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1975021069
- Cited by
- 112
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 6.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Keywords
- intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy, personality disorders, DSM-IV personality disorders, treatment efficacy, long-term follow-up, cost-effectiveness, Brief Symptom Inventory, interpersonal problems, maintenance of treatment gains
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Demography, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Male, Mental Health Services, Middle Aged, Personality Disorders, Psychotherapy, Brief, Health Care Costs, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
