Personality disorder in later life: no longer a diagnosis of exclusion

Abstract

Adults over the age of 65 who are diagnosable with personality disorder face numerous problems within current mental health service provision. These include a lack of diagnostic clarity and a lack of specialist personality disorder‐specific interventions. The authors present a pilot mini therapeutic community service for older adults diagnosable with personality disorder consistent with recommendations from NSF, NIMHE and NICE. Clinical experience suggests that positive outcomes demonstrated in similar services for adults of working age may be possible in this group and preliminary outcome results described in the article suggest a trend of clinical and functional improvement, and some economic benefits. This will need to be replicated and tested with a larger sample to confirm these findings.