CBT for Personality Disorder

Until recently personality disorders have often been seen as chronic, somewhat intractable disorders, for which psychological treatment is relatively ineffective. However over the past two decades thinking has quite dramatically changed, with the emergence of CBT therapies specifically tailored to the more entrenched belief patterns that seem to characterise personality disorders.

Psychiatrist, Dr A. T. Beck and colleaugues developed a slightly modified form of his Cognitive Therapy tailored to address the special issues of people with personality disorders. In Schema Therapy, psychologist Dr Jeffrey Young has further developed a Cognitive Therapy approach that emphasises the base level core beliefs, or schemata, that appear to be central to understanding Personality Disorders.

These approaches show significant promise in the treatment of disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder

Both of these above cognitive therapy approaches have shown beneficial effects in controlled trials, albeit requiring significantly more therapy sessions than traditional CBT for other disorders.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy is another CBT approach that has been found to result in improvements in people with Borderline Personality Disorder. However, again, significantly more treatment sessions are required than is typically the case with CBT for other disorders.

Further information on Borderline Personality Disorder and it's treatment can be found at BorderlinePersonalityDisorder .com.au