Resources for service providers
Online
The Mental Health Professionals’ Network (MHPN), in partnership with the Australian BPD Foundation and Spectrum Personality Disorder Service for Victoria is producing a free webinar series to increase clinicians’ expertise and ability to provide high quality, responsive, evidence-based treatment, care and support for people with BPD. Click on the video to view the first of the six-part webinar series. To view more webinars from MHPN click here. Click here to register for the “Treatment principles for people living with borderline personality disorder” webinar on 21 February 2018.
Register with Centre for Perinatal Excellence (COPE) to access a free, accredited online training program for health professionals to support guideline implementation for health professionals across primary, maternity and postnatal healthcare settings.
BPD Webinar Series – What is BPD?
Guidelines
Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Borderline Personality Disorder (2012)
Borderline personality is the most common and serious of the personality disorders, affecting 1% of the general population.
The Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Borderline Personality Disorder (2012) will assist health professionals to diagnose, treat and manage BPD in adolescents and adults.
This guideline will also improve understanding and recognition of BPD in health services and the community.
Developed by a multi-disciplinary Guideline Development Committee of clinical, consumer and carer representatives with BPD expertise, the guideline discusses a range of treatment options, including 63 recommendations covering diagnosis, management, treatment and information for supporting carers and families.
Project Air Strategy Treatment Guideline of Personality Disorders (2015)
These Treatment Guidelines have been developed by Project Air Strategy to assist services and practitioners working with personality disorders.
National Perinatal Mental Health Guideline (2017)
The scope of the new Guideline includes the assessment of the Borderline Personality Disorder, and the treatment and management of these together with severe mental illnesses in primary care settings:
Recommendations include:
- Health professionals providing care to women in the perinatal period (20 weeks pregnant to 4-6 weeks post-birth) should access training to improve their understanding of care for women with borderline personality disorder
- Trauma-informed care and specific support for health professionals in dealing with challenging behaviours is a priority.
- A coordinated approach should be taken with a team covering parent and infant mental health care, and access to intensive maternal child health care in the postnatal period. There should be clear communication, advance care planning, a written plan, and continuity of care across clinical settings.
- Ensure that child protection risks are understood and addressed, if necessary.
- Where possible, provide women with BPD with structured psychological therapies that are specifically designed for this condition and conducted by trained and supervised health professionals.
- Encourage pregnant or postnatal women with BPD to undertake mindfulness or relaxation training to assist in managing emotional dysregulation.
- As far as possible, don’t use pharmacological treatments as the primary therapy for women with BPD, especially during pregnancy. This is because of the risks to the fetus of some medications during pregnancy, and the risk of overdose or substance dependence for the woman of some medications.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2015)
Explore the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline for assessment and management of BPD in this interactive flow chart.
Books
Personality Disorder: The Definitive Reader
This book is excellent value for anyone who has had difficulty working with clients who have personality disorder. It brings together fourteen classic papers, which address the impact that working with personality disorder patients can have on staff. It also offers theoretical explanations for personality disorder, and explores other issues such as the concept of boundaries in clinical practice, psychiatric staff as attachment figures and the relationship between severity of personality disorder and childhood experiences. Each paper is introduced with contextual material, and is followed by a series of questions that are intended to be used as educational exercises.
Personality Disorder and Community Mental Health Teams: A Practitioner’s Guide
This book considers the various difficulties encountered, with reference to current thinking about the origins, maintenance and treatment of personality disorder. Written by practitioners for practitioners, it provides a framework for developing effective care plans with minimal use of technical terms and jargon. Rather than promote an approach based on a single theoretical model, consideration is given to ways in which different approaches can be effectively combined within a multi-disciplinary team.
Training and resources for GPs and mental health professionals
Professional development
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy Supervision Group and Online Consultation Team
The Australian DBT Institute offers group supervision for clinicians interested in working with clients with BPD. The role of the consultation team is to assist in the therapeutic process by providing feedback and support to therapists. The monthly meetings provide advice, share ideas and discuss ways to cope with difficult clients.
How to Treat Quiz: Borderline Personality Disorder
Online quiz following reading, one hour’s duration. This article is written by Prof Jayashri Kulkarni from Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre.
For PDP, find online quiz at http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/home. This quiz is only available to Australian registered doctors.
E-Mental Health in Practice Modules
The Black Dog Institute offers a suite of online training modules, webinars and resources designed to introduce GPs to online programs and tools, and to demonstrate how these tools and technologies can be integrated into face-to-face care as a free or low-cost supplementary resource to their services. There is also a webinar about online self-care for doctors.
E-mental Health – A guide for GPs
The RACGP has developed e-Mental health: A guide for GPs to assist doctors in using e-mental health interventions with their patients when it is safe to do so. The Guide is designed to provide an introduction to the field of e-mental health, direct doctors to key online resources for them and their patients, and help them to decide how to use e-mental health in their practice.
Practice Ground offers Q&A sessions, webinars, courses and resources collected and shared in one web page. The resources are designed for clinicians interested in developing DBT skills or using DBT strategies to work with clients with BPD.
Resources for GP
Managing borderline personality disorder and substance use – An integrated approach
This article provides an overview of how the GP can provide effective support for patients with co-occurring borderline personality disorder and substance use disorder, including approaches to assessment and treatment, the therapeutic relationship, referral pathways and managing risk and chronic suicidality.
Borderline Personality Disorder – A resource booklet for GPs
This booklet is a short guide for GPs working with patients diagnosed with BPD. It covers the role of the doctor in the care plan, managing crises and suicidality, being aware of consequences of hospitalisation and medication, and taking care of yourself.
Mental health risk assessment – A guide for GPs
This article summarises the risk assessment of patients with possible mental disorders and provides suggestions regarding measures that may be undertaken to manage risk in psychiatric emergencies.
Borderline Personality Disorder: An evidence-based guide for generalist mental health professionals
By Anthony W. Bateman and Roy Krawitz
This is a book for general mental health professionals who treat people with borderline personality disorder (Bpd). It offers practical guidance on how to help people with Bpd with advice based on research evidence. After a discussion of the symptoms of Bpd, the authors review all the generalist treatment interventions that have resulted in good outcomes in randomised controlled trials, when compared with specialist treatments, and summarise the effective components of these interventions. The treatment strategies are organised into a structured approach called Structured Clinical Management (Scm), which can be delivered by general mental health professionals without extensive additional training.
The heart of the book outlines the principles underpinning Scm and offers a step-by-step guide to the clinical intervention. Practitioners can learn the interventions easily and develop more confidence in treating people with Bpd. In addition, a chapter is devoted to how to help families – an issue commonly neglected when treating patients with Bpd. Finally the authors discuss the top 10 strategies for delivering treatment and outline how the general mental health clinician can deliver these strategies competently.
Case Studies in Clinical Psychological Science: Bridging the gap between science and practice demonstrates in detail how the clinical science model can be applied to actual cases. Edited by Professors William O’Donohue and Scott O. Lilienfeld, this book’s unique structure presents dialogues between leading clinical researchers regarding the treatment of a wide variety of psychological problems, from depression and Alzheimer’s disease to Panic Disorder and chronic pain. Chapters describe what evidence-based practice consists of for various clinical problems and are followed by commentary sections in which other leading clinical researchers analyze the case at hand, pointing out additional assessment and treatment options and controversial issues. The chapter authors then reply to the commentary in response sections. By examining the application of scientifically based interventions to actual cases and modeling thoughtful and collegial discussion among prominent clinical researchers, Case Studies in Clinical Psychological Science will assist students, practitioners, and clinical researchers with the crucial task of applying research evidence to psychotherapy and bridging the gap between science and practice.
