Consumer-clinician co-taught borderline personality disorder training: a pilot evaluation

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Mental Health Training
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) requires specialized clinician training.
• Existing training programs often lack input from individuals with lived experience.
• Mental health and substance use professionals need effective BPD education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a novel co-taught training program for borderline personality disorder (BPD).
• To assess the added value of consumer (lived experience) input in clinician training.
• To compare a co-taught model with a clinician-only training approach.

Main Methods:

• A pilot study involving 73 participants from mental health and substance use fields.
• Training program co-taught by clinicians and consumers with lived experience of BPD.
• Pilot evaluation using participant ratings of the training program.

Main Results:

• The co-taught BPD training received superior ratings compared to previous clinician-only training.
• Consumer input was found to add substantial value to the training program.
• Participants rated the co-taught training highly, indicating its effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• Consumer input significantly enhances the value and effectiveness of mental health training programs.
• Co-taught training models show promise for improving borderline personality disorder education.
• Further multicenter studies are warranted to confirm these findings and their implications for future BPD training.