HOW DOES THE SCHEMA THERAPY HELP?

Schema Therapy for borderline personality disorder

For the first time, a large study of effectiveness has shown that in a high percentage of patients with borderline personality disorder a full recovery can be achieved regarding all the range of symptoms. The controlled study, which is included in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, shows that a new approach -the Schema Therapy- is, regarding some effectiveness criteria, twice as effective as one more traditional psychodynamic approach, the Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP). The Borderline personality disorder (BPD) was considered until recently as hardly treatable, with little scientific justification for the long-term therapy. This study proves that Schema Therapy leads to a full remission regarding some psychopathology criteria in almost 50% of the patients, and to a significant improvement to the two thirds of patients. The success of the therapy is closely related with its duration and intensity (two sessions a week for 3 years). These results are clearly in contradiction with the prevailing view that the treatment for BPD cannot lead to a full recovery and that long-term therapy is ineffective.