Follow-up effects of a brief Good Psychiatric Management treatment for borderline personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is among the most frequent, debilitating, and lethal mental conditions. Treatment for patients with BPD involves structured psychotherapy, but such treatment is often not readily available due to imbalances in supply and demand for care. Brief treatments that are available as first-line interventions may address this delay in care. No controlled study has assessed the effectiveness of brief psychiatric interventions, such as 10 sessions of Good Psychiatric Management (GPM) over 12 months follow-up, in comparison with treatment as usual. Whereas most psychotherapy studies in patients with BPD focus on symptom reduction at the end of treatment, more research is needed on the patients' symptom levels after one year.

The present study compares brief psychiatric treatment (4 months of GPM) with treatment as usual (4 months of TAU). Participants (N = 76 patients with BPD) undergo assessments at intake, after two months, at discharge (4 months) and 1 year follow-up (16 months after intake). At these four time-points, each patient was assessed using the clinician rated Zanarini BPD (ZAN-BPD) scale.

The study found brief GPM to show significantly greater symptom reduction in ZAN-BPD scores between intake of 4-month treatment and 12-month follow-up (16 months later), compared to treatment as usual.

This study shows that after one year, the effects of a brief psychiatric treatment are strengthened in both groups. Additionally, brief GPM presents an advantage in helping BPD patients make further progress after the intervention has ended, which potentially helps diminish the societal burden of disease related to BPD symptomatology.