Bridging Affect Consciousness, Mentalization and Trauma- Exploring an Integrative Treatment Approach for Personality Disorder (PD).

Check if you might fit

Answer for yourself. This is not a decision: only the study team can say whether you can take part.

• Are you between 20 and 40 years old?YesNo

What the trial wants to find out

Study background: Specialized Group Outpatient Clinic within specialist mental health services, tailoring two year group treatment programmes for severe Avoidant PD (AvPD) and Borderline PD (BPD) with Affect Consciousness (AC) targeting specific areas of emotional dysfunction. Aims: Our main hypothesis, adding AC to Mentalization- based treatment (MBT) to expand the breadth and depth of therapeutically productive work on affect, will aim to examine health indicators, processes and mechanisms of change in depth. The study will extracts preliminary data after 5 years and 10 years to investigate clinical change, variation and outcome during MBT for PD employing AC as add on to MBT. The study has a randomized controlled trail design, with MBT with or without AC as add-on. The RCT is grounded on original literature on Affect Theory, as a framework for understanding patient functioning, and MBT, framing the therapy.Implications: AC methodology as add on can lead to more tailored treatment programmes, service planning, allocation of resources, guidelines, ACI certification and method development for PDs.

The 3 groups in the trial

• Experimental group: AC-group intervention as Add- on group to MBT group therapyTreatment being tested

  The study's sample (N \>300 in the period 2025-2035) is randomised into a two-group comparative design, 50% with AvPD and 50% with BPD will participate in an Affect Consciousness (AC) group as a supplement to MBT, experiment group.

  Treatment: Experimental group: AC-group therapy intervention.

• Control group 1: Body Awareness Group as Add on group to MBT group therapyExisting treatment, for comparison

  25% with AvPD and 25% with BPD will participate in an Body Awareness group as a supplement to MBT as a control group.

  Treatment: Control group 1: Body Awareness Group.

• Control group 2: Art Psychotherapy group as ADD- on to MBT group therapyExisting treatment, for comparison

  25% with AvPD and 25% with BPD will participate in an Art Psychotherapy group as a supplement to MBT as a control group.

  Treatment: Control group 2: Art Psychotherapy group.