Psychodynamic Oriented Multimodal Therapy for Inpatients with Borderline Personality Disorder: Effectiveness, Response, and Dropout

Abstract

Psychodynamically oriented multimodal therapy approaches are efficacious for outpatients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Until now, no study has reported the effectiveness, response, and dropout in a psychodynamic oriented multimodal therapy program for inpatients (PDOMT). In this study, we compared the results of 269 individuals seeking a 3-month inpatient treatment with previous studies for BPD inpatients by examining 269 individuals. The Borderline Personality Index (CUT-20-R) was used as the main outcome measure. Therapy outcome was defined in effect size (ES), response, and remission rates. In the pre-post comparison of the CUT-20-R, the ES was 0.74. The response and the remission rates were 34.6% and 2.6%. 50.6% of participants remained unchanged, 6.7% deteriorated, and 27.5% finished treatment prematurely. Male gender and patients with a dependent personality disorder increased the dropout risk. The results suggest that PDOMT might be effective for some, but not all BPD patients. Due to methodological shortcomings of the chosen strategy, future research should examine the effectiveness of PDOMT in a randomized controlled trial.