Psychotherapy of Borderline Personality Disorder: Similarities and Differences in Evidence-Based Disorder-Specific Treatment Approaches

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is known as a serious psychiatric disorder with high prevalence rates in clinical psychiatric populations BPD is often very difficult to treat and is linked with conflicts among therapists and treatment teams Over the last decades in particular neurobiological findings and psychotherapeutic research have led to a better understanding and treatment outcomes in BPD The therapy of choice is psychotherapy In the following review four efficient disorder-specific treatments for BPS are presented two of which are cognitive-behaviourally oriented (dialectical behavioural therapy DBT scheme-focused therapy SFT) and the other two are psychodynamically oriented (transference focused psychotherapy TFP mentalisation-based treatment MBT) In this review the similarities and differences of the methods are elaborated and discussed After the current considerable progress in disorder-specific treatments for BPS the development of differential Indication criteria for the various treatments could lead to an additional improvement of BPD therapy in the future