Problem-solving therapy for people with personality disorders

Abstract

People with personality disorder suffer high levels of distress, suicide, self-harm, addiction, family breakdown and social exclusion. They place a high burden of cost on primary care, costing almost twice as much as people without. Therefore, the development of effective treatments for people with personality disorders has the potential to reduce distress, social problems and health care costs. The importance of this has been recognized by the UK Department of Health in their document, Personality Disorder: No Longer a Diagnosis of Exclusion. While the existence of provision for people with personality disorder in intensive inpatient services and in forensic services was acknowledged, what was identified as missing in many areas was a community-based service for people with personality disorders. The guidance was that all Health Service Trusts should develop multidisciplinary, specialist personality disorder treatment teams, whose functions would be to develop ways of working with patients with personality disorder and to support health service staff whose caseload includes people with personality disorder. Clearly, these specialist teams require a repertoire of effective treatments for working with people with personality disorder. The purpose of this chapter is to describe in detail one particular therapy-problem-solving therapy. Before focusing on this therapy, however, a broader picture of psychosocial treatments for people with personality disorder will be given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)