Treatment Response of Severe and Nonsevere Personality Disorders in a Therapeutic Community Day Unit

Associations between patient characteristics and ratings of treatment milieu

“…In our study, a mood disorder in general was associated with higher rating of order and organization. We found no support for the assertion, by Moos et al (12) and Vaglum et al (10), that drop-outs perceived the ward atmosphere as less involving, less supportive, less problem-oriented and less organized than completers.…”

“…Baird (7) found that non-depressed patients evaluated their treatment programme as more supportive and well organized than depressed patients; higher educational level has shown to be associated with a more negative perception of treatment milieu (8) and Friedman et al (9) found that women tended to rate their treatment programme more positively than men. More generally, Vaglum et al (10) found that the severity of disorders seemed to influence how the patients perceived the treatment milieu. The less severe disordered patients evaluated support, practical orientation and organization more favourable.…”

“…Some empirical support for this was found by Peterson et al (11), reporting that patients who were better integrated into the programme were more likely to continue in outpatient treatment. Research on the relation between perceived treatment milieu and completion rate has indicated that non-completers perceive the programme as less involving, less supportive, less problem-oriented and less organized than completers (10,12). However, most of these findings come from studies designed to answer quite different questions from the impact of individual differences on how the milieu is perceived.…”

An innovative outreach service for people with severe personality disorders: Patient characteristics and clinical activities

“…Comparisons of these patients with those who attended for treatment detect n o demographic or psychiatric differences between the two groups. Relatively high rates of non-attendance and difficulties of engagement are recognized problems amongst people with SPD and are therefore to be expected in this service (Norton and Hinshelwood, 1996;Vaglum et al, 1990). Whether these non-attendance rates are acceptable for a service such as this is a matter of debate for clinicians and service managers.…”

Body Awareness Group Therapy for Patients with Personality Disorders

“…This paper is part of a comprehensive study of 97 patients admitted to the unit during the period in question. Details about the total sample and the selection of patients for the BAGT are given elsewhere [Skatteboe et al, 1989;Vaglum et al, 1989]. Details about the 72 included patients are given in tables 1,2.…”