@article{ref1,
title="Treatment response in subtypes of borderline personality disorder",
journal="Personality and mental health",
year="2009",
author="Digre, E.I. and Reece, J. and Johnson, A.L. and Thomas, R.A.",
volume="3",
number="1",
pages="56-67",
abstract="Background and Aims Based on the frequently noted heterogeneity in symptom representation and treatment resistance amongst clients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), this study sought to investigate whether a sample of 77 people with severe personality disorder, primarily BPD (h = 74), could be grouped into clinically meaningful subtypes. A follow-up question was whether the subtypes would respond differently to a specialist intervention. <br><br>METHOD Participants were public mental health clients referred to a specialist residential treatment programme in Victoria, Australia. Using an existing data set, cluster analysis was applied in order to identify subtypes based on various demographic, clinical and psychological variables. Post-treatment analyses were carried out to investigate change in self-harm, suicide attempts, depression and dissociation. <br><br>RESULTS Three subtypes were identified, namely: withdrawn-internalizing, severely disturbed-internalizing and anxious-externalizing. Furthermore, the subtypes responded differently to the treatment, with the withdrawn-internalizing subtype showing reduced levels of dissociation and the anxious-externalizing subtype responding by large reductions in levels of depression. The severely disturbed-internalizing subtype did not improve significantly on any of the outcome measures in this study. <br><br>DISCUSSION These findings suggest that subtypes can be identified amongst clients with BPD, and that the subtypes may be related to treatment outcomes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1932-8621",
doi="10.1002/pmh.64",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pmh.64"
}