Evidence-based inpatient psychotherapy in borderline personality disorder

Abstract

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is frequent (prevalence in Germany between 0.7% and 4.5%) [11] and is associated with ahigh level of psychological stress and frequent emergency inpatient admissions. The provision of disorder-specific outpatient psychotherapy is still insufficient also in Germany. This article provides an overview of the available data on the effectiveness of inpatient psychotherapy for BPD. Aqualitative review on the effectiveness and therapy outcome predictors was conducted based on aliterature search in PubMed. Overall, very few randomized controlled trials are available; in contrast uncontrolled studies are predominant. Most evidence is available for dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) but other approaches, including psychodynamic procedures, have also been studied. The currently available data suggest an efficacy of inpatient psychotherapy for BPD; however, randomized trials with larger samples and sufficient representation including male patients are largely lacking. There is also no substantial direct evidence for the superiority of inpatient compared to outpatient psychotherapy.