Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Jun 2016)

Comparison of treatment outcomes in severe personality disorder patients with or without substance use disorders: a 36-month prospective pragmatic follow-up study

  • Lana F,
  • Sánchez-Gil C,
  • Adroher ND,
  • Pérez V,
  • Feixas G,
  • Martí-Bonany J,
  • Torrens M

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2016, no. Issue 1
pp. 1477 – 1487

Abstract

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Fernando Lana,1–3 Carmen Sánchez-Gil,1–3 Núria D Adroher,4,5 Víctor Pérez,1–4 Guillem Feixas,6 Josep Martí-Bonany,1–3 Marta Torrens1–4 1Institute of Neuropsychiatry and Addictions (INAD), Centre Emili Mira and Hospital del Mar, Parc de Salut Mar, Barcelona, Spain; 2Mental Health Research Networking Center (CIBERSAM), Madrid, Spain; 3Department of Psychiatry, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; 4IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute), Barcelona, Spain; 5Public Health and Epidemiology Research Networking Center (CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain; 6Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Background: Concurrent personality disorder (PD) and substance use disorder (SUD) are common in clinical practice. However, SUD is the main criterion for study exclusion in most psychotherapeutic studies of PD. As a result, data on treatment outcomes in patients with concurrent PD/SUD are scarce.Methods: The study sample consisted of 51 patients diagnosed with severe PD and admitted for psychotherapeutic treatment as a part of routine mental health care. All patients were diagnosed with PD according to the Structured Clinical Interview for PD. Patients were further assessed (DSM-IV diagnostic criteria) to check for the presence of concurrent SUD, with 28 patients diagnosed with both disorders (PD-SUD). These 28 cases were then compared to the 23 patients without SUD (PD-nSUD) in terms of psychiatric hospitalizations and psychiatric emergency room (ER) visits before and during the 6-month therapeutic intervention and every 6 months thereafter for a total of 36 months.Results: The baseline clinical characteristics correspond to a sample of PD patients (78% met DSM-IV criteria for borderline PD) with poor general functioning and a high prevalence of suicide attempts and self-harm behaviors. Altogether, the five outcome variables – the proportion and the number of psychiatric inpatient admissions, the number of days hospitalized, and the proportion and the number of psychiatric ER visits – improved significantly during the treatment period, and this improvement was maintained throughout the follow-up period. Although PD-SUD patients had more psychiatric hospitalizations and ER visits than PD-nSUD patients during follow-up, the differences between these two groups remained stable over the study period indicating that the treatment was equally effective in both groups.Conclusion: Specialized psychotherapy for severe PD can be effectively applied in patients with concurrent PD-SUD under usual practice conditions. These findings suggest that exclusion of patients with dual disorders from specialized treatments is unjustified. Keywords: personality disorder, substance use disorder, borderline personality disorder, dual disorders, psychotherapy, pragmatic clinical study 

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