A service evaluation of short-term mentalisation based treatment for personality disorder
Open accessAbstract
Background: People with personality disorder experience long waiting times for access to psychological treatments, resulting from a limited availability of long-term psychotherapies and a paucity of evidence-based brief interventions. Mentalisation-based treatment (MBT) is an efficacious therapeutic modality for personality disorder, but little is known about its viability as a short-term treatment. Aims: We aimed to evaluate mental health, client satisfaction and psychological functioning outcomes before and after a 10-week group MBT programme as part of a stepped-care out-patient personality disorder service. Method: We examined routinely collected pre–post treatment outcomes from 176 individuals (73% female) aged 20–63 years, attending a dedicated out-patient personality disorder service, who completed MBT treatment. Participants completed assessments examining mentalising capacity, client satisfaction, emotional reactivity, psychiatric symptom distress and social functioning. Results: Post-MBT outcomes suggested increased mentalising capacity (mean difference 5.1, 95% CI 3.4–6.8, P < 0.001) and increased client satisfaction with care (mean difference 4.3, 95% CI 3.3–5.2, P < 0.001). Post-MBT emotional reactivity (mean difference −6.3, 95% CI −8.4 to −4.3, P < 0.001), psychiatric symptom distress (mean difference −5.2, 95% CI −6.8 to −3.7, P < 0.001) and impaired social functioning (mean difference −0.7, 95% CI −1.2 to −0.3, P = 0.002) were significantly lower than pre-treatment. Improved mentalising capacity predicted improvements in emotional reactivity (β = −0.56, P < 0.001) and social functioning (β = −0.35, P < 0.001). Conclusions: Short-term MBT as a low-intensity treatment for personality disorder was associated with positive pre–post treatment changes in social and psychological functioning. MBT as deployed in this out-patient service expands access to personality disorder treatment.
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Recently studies have reported adaptations of shorter versions (3 months or less) of DBT and MBT with encouraging findings.
“However, recently studies have reported adaptations of shorter versions (3 months or less) of DBT 2 and MBT 3 with encouraging findings.”
From Acceptability and feasibility of a short-term group therapy for people with borderline personality disorder symptoms (2024) · cites this paper as [3]
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- Authors
- McGowan, N. M., Syam, N., McKenna, D., Pearce, S., & Saunders, K. E. A.
- Affiliations
- Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (GB)
- John Radcliffe Hospital (GB)
- Corresponding author
- McGowan, Niall M.
- Venue
- BJPsych Open
- Publisher
- Royal College of Psychiatrists
- Published
- 2021-08-02
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- e140-e140
- ISSN
- 2056-4724 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8358973
- OpenAlex
- W3188573006
- Cited by
- 14
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 1.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- BJPsych Open (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute for Health and Care Research
- Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust
- 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
- mentalization-based treatment, personality disorders, brief psychotherapy, stepped care, emotional reactivity, social functioning, client satisfaction, access to psychological treatment, waiting time
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