Mentalizing the therapist - Therapist experiences with short-term mentalization-based therapy for borderline personality disorder: A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND

Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) was originally developed as a structured psychotherapy approach developed to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD) lasting up to 18 months in outpatient settings. However, a short-term (5 months) MBT program has recently been developed. No studies have investigated how MBT therapists experience the shift towards conducting short-term MBT for BPD.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to explore therapist experiences with conducting short-term MBT for outpatients with BPD in the Danish mental health services.

METHODS

Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with seven therapists about their experiences with short-term MBT after a one-year pilot phase. The interviews were verbatim transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS

The following four major themes from the therapists' experiences with short-term MBT were found in the qualitative analysis: (1) , (2) , (3) , and (4) .

CONCLUSION

Most therapists were overall reluctant towards changing from long-term to short-term MBT. These therapist experiences could inform implementation of short-term MBT in mental health settings in the future.