Personality disorder programme No longer a diagnosis of exclusion

A social networking website that supports people in Cumbria with personality disorders won a BT E-health Insider Award at a ceremony in London on 20 October 2009.

The website www.itc.org.uk was the overall winner in the category of ‘Best Use of IM&T to Promote Patient Safety’. It was set up by the Psychotherapy Department at Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust as part of the Department of Health National Programme for the Development of Services for People with Personality Disorders. The initial development of the site was a joint effort between the staff members of the Psychotherapy Department including Dale Ashman of Borderline UK, Mark Needham of CSIP NW, and Xenzone Internet Technologies. The site has been further developed in use by service users and members of staff.

The website www.itc.org.uk is led by service users with personality disorders and related complex mental health problems who are members of the therapeutic community treatment programme. The website includes a number of service user only support boards including a real time chatroom. The chatroom is for use both in a crisis or if particularly difficult problems can be foreseen. The site is moderated by elected service user members of the community who use a sophisticated system of feedback so that online exchanges which raise significant concerns are communicated to staff members.
It has been extremely successful in terms of containing difficulties in the times outside the usual treatment programme, and extending learning opportunities to members.

The website www.itc.org.uk compliments a comprehensive support package for people with personality disorders including outreach work, formal psychotherapies, and a ‘mini’ therapeutic community to offer service users out of hours support. The website, known as ‘P2P’*, ensures a safe group response as an alternative to use of the professional network.

The service has been in operation in North Cumbria since 2005 and is now in transition to being extended to reach the County. In the first year of operation of the service:

• Suicide attempts fell by 69%
• Self-harm incidents fell by 48%
• Admissions to Casualty fell by 80%
• Admissions to psychiatric hospital fell by 50%
• Days our service users spent as inpatients in psychiatric hospital fell by 90%
• Contact with the police fell by 70%.

Dr Mike Rigby, Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy and Clinical Lead for the service, said:

“What we have done is to transfer the culture of our therapeutic community to a dedicated social networking site so that the work can continue beyond the two days each week when we meet face to face. This required a lot of thought about boundaries and how the system could be kept safe. It solves many of the difficulties of offering an intensive treatment programme across a large rural area and is also highly cost-effective. The results in terms of improved outcomes for service users and decreased use of other services speak for themselves.”

The team collected their award at the Hilton, Park Lane in London on 20 October 2009. Dr Rigby added:

“We are absolutely delighted . This represents a lot of hard work by service users and people in our team.”

For more information contact Dr Mike Rigby, mike.rigby@cumbria.nhs.uk.