Psychiatrists find cure for untreatable mental illness
Published: October 11, 2006
Patients suffering from a hitherto untreatable mental illness called the Borderline Personality Disorder, can now hope to achieve full recovery from it.
For the first time, a major outcome study has shown that a high percentage of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder can now be treated with a new approach - Schema Therapy, which is more than twice as effective as a widely practiced psychodynamic approach, Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).
Schema Therapy was also found to be less costly and to have a much lower drop out rate.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) has until recent years been considered untreatable, with little scientific justification for long-term therapy.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, Borderline Personality Disorder is found in about 1 to 2.5 percent of the general population–about 5.8 to 8.7 million Americans, most of whom are young women.
Patients with the disorder live life on the edge: they’re typically impulsive, unstable, exquisitely sensitive to rejection, have regular outbursts of anger, and live daily life with extreme emotional pain. They often self-mutilate and make repeated suicide attempts.
Many with BPD either cannot work or do not function at levels that could be expected in light of their intellectual capacities. As a result, the disorder carries high medical and societal costs, accounting for more than one in every five inpatients with psychiatric admissions.
Until recently psychotherapy offered help for only some of the symptoms of BPD. The best available alternatives, such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, although relieved many of the self-destructive behavioral symptoms of the disorder, it wasn’t been able to reduce many of the other core symptoms, especially those related to deeper personality change.
Schema therapists help patients to change their entrenched, self-defeating life patterns using cognitive, behavioral, and emotion-focused techniques. The treatment focuses on the relationship with the therapist, daily life outside of therapy, and the traumatic childhood experiences that are common in this disorder.
This study demonstrates that schema therapy leads to complete recovery in about 50% of the patients, and to significant improvement in two-thirds. However, the success of the therapy depends upon the patients’ regularity in attending two medical sessions a week for a period of 3 years.
The researchers concluded by saying that the results clearly contradict the prevailing opinion that BPD cannot be fully cured, and that longer-term psychotherapy is ineffective.
The findings of the study are published in a recent issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry published by the American Medical Association.
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