Peer-support and group psychoeducation for patients with borderline personality disorder: A feasibility study

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common disorder associated with poor mental health and socio-professional outcomes. Even though it is known to be a treatable condition, almost half of the patients are still not responding to current psychotherapeutic treatment programs. Peer-support interventions are thought to be an interesting way to improve these treatments, but data regarding the feasibility of such interventions are scarce.

The present naturalistic study aimed to assess the feasibility and acceptability of incorporating a peer-support worker (PSW) with a lived experience of BPD as a co-leader in an evidence-based psychoeducation group based on Good Psychiatric Management for patients with BPD, with a pre-post design.

Overall, 46 patients were included in the analysis, among whom 34 completed the post-group analysis. Almost all the patients found the presence of the PSW relevant and useful, completion rates were high, and security outcomes were satisfactory.

Despite numerous limitations, including the naturalistic design, the absence of a control group, and the high level of training of our PSW (that limits the generalizability of our findings to less trained PSW), we believe that our study adds to the current scarce literature on the usefulness of integrating PSW with a lived experience of BPD in evidence-based treatment programs for patients with BPD.