The beneficial effect on family life in treating borderline personality.
The harmful effect of borderline patients on their families is an important but relatively neglected aspect of outcome studies. This study concerns changes in perceived quality of relationships with partners and children of 24 patients suffering Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) after 12 months of treatment with the Conversational Model (CM). They were compared to 21 parents with BPD receiving "Treatment as Usual" (TAU) from their referring clinicians for the same period. Both groups developed naturalistically giving the study a quasi-experimental design. The Social Adjustment Scale (SAS-SR) was administered on intake and again after 12 months. The subscales dealing with relationships with children, with partners and with the family unit were scored and compared between groups. It was found that the perceived relationships with children and partners improved significantly for the CM group but not for the TAU group.