The STEPPS Group Treatment Program as an alternative in helping people with borderline personality disorder

Abstract

Borderline personality disorder is a complex mental disorder which has severe impact on the quality of an individual's life. Although it is the most common type of personality disorder in the population of people with mental disorders, it has so far proven to be rather resistant to pharmacological treatments. This may suggest that effective psychotherapeutic methods need to be developed to help people with this diagnosis. There have been several attempts to develop successful therapeutic interventions for borderline personality disorder. Most of them were developed either from cognitive-behavioural or from psychoanalytic paradigm. More recent studies have focused on developing a more holistic approach. One such approach is the STEPPS program. This programme combines elements from cognitive-behavioural and systemic approaches. STEPPS is a 20-week, manually based group treatment for patients with borderline personality disorder. In comparison with other established approaches, the STEPPS program does not interfere with patient's other ongoing treatments. In this article we present the basics of the STEPPS program. We also provide a review of studies, investigating the effectiveness of the program. We also discuss advantages and disadvantages of the program and suggest some topics for further research.

Keywords

• borderline personality disorder
• STEPPS
• cognitive-behavioural therapy
• systemic psychotherapy
• psychotherapy effectiveness