From the Therapeutic Community to the Community: a Preliminary Evaluation of a Psychosocial Outpatient Service for Severe Personality Disorders

In this paper a preliminary evaluation of a specialist programme for the ambulatory treatment of patients with personality disorder is presented. This study presents 36 months’ follow up results in several dimensions of patients’ functioning, including number & severity of psychiatric symptoms, social adaptation, self-harm, attempted suicide & psychiatric utilisation. The results showed significant improvements in all areas, & suggest that that the proposed programme is a promising model for the treatment of personality disorder. (33 refs)