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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness
Published on: August 1, 2017
An evaluation of new services for personality-disordered offenders: staff and service user perspectives
Zoë Fortune1, Diana Rose, Mike Crawford
1Health Service and Population Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK. zoe.fortune@iop.kcl.ac.uk
Background:
Little is known about effective treatment for personality-disordered (PD) offenders. We aimed to obtain the perspective of service users and staff on: (a) the experience of receiving treatment; and (b) the experience of delivering treatment, within new forensic services for PD offenders.
Material:
Thematic analysis was applied to qualitative interviews with 30 service users and 22 staff.
Discussion:
Service users perceived that they were making positive changes in the areas of anger management, communication, self-harm, self-esteem and insight into their difficulties. Undertaking the clinical work was extremely stressful for staff.
Conclusions:
Forensic PD services may be having an important impact on the quality of service users' lives. Whether treatment is successful in reducing long-term risk to others remains to be seen, and the cost-effectiveness of these services needs to be examined.
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