Efficacy of Psychoeducation in Borderline Personality Disorder: Results of a Mirror Study

Abstract

Background and objectives: Personality disorders are increasing their prevalence in clinical population, and they use many resources that frequently are scarcely efficient. Group therapy has demonstrated its efficacy, but it has a high cost in time and personal resources. Psychoeducation has proved its efficacy for other diagnosis, but there are few studies that develop this approach. Some authors propose psychoeducation as an efficient pre-treatment in this population. Our objective is to evaluate if this intervention in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) patients could influence over the number of emergency room visits and / or psychiatric hospitalization days. Methods: This is a mirror study comparing number of emergency visits and hospitalization days, during the previous and posterior six months to the psychoeducation group. These data are already compared relating to the assistance to that group (regular, irregular or never). Results: the patients that assist regularly to the psychoeducation group reduce their number of emergency visits and hospitalization days during the period after the participation. This effect is not observed in the other two groups, though the three groups have similar clinical data. Conclusions: Psychoeducation group seems to be cost-efficient in the treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder, reducing urgencies and hospitalization days and facilitating the inclusion in more exigent therapeutic groups.