Personality disorder programme No longer a diagnosis of exclusion

The Guardian newspaper has today posted a story on its website outlining how a partnership between mental health and probation services has halved prison recall rates for high-risk personality disordered offenders. In a positive piece, the author Alan Travis, writes:

“A partnership between Camden and Islington NHS mental health trust and the London probation service aims to reduce the number of high-risk personality disordered offenders from being recalled to prison after they have been released on licence into the community. The results so far have been impressive, with a 50% reduction in the number of offenders recalled to prison between September 2009 (when the scheme was fully up and running) and June 2010 compared with the same period the previous year.

“The Impact project is based on the idea that people with a personality disorder are not getting dealt with either in prison or in the community. MoJ research shows that the level of neurosis and personality disorders is three times higher for those behind bars than among the general population, with 62% of male and 57% of female sentenced prisoners having a personality disorder.

“Winifred Bolton, a consultant clinical psychologist, who is Camden and Islington’s clinical lead for personality disorder, helped to set up the project: “We found that 72% of ‘high-risk offenders’ recalled back to prison by probation officers from Camden and Islington last year, either had a diagnosis of personality disorder or were undiagnosed with a significant number of disordered personality traits,” she says.

People with psychiatric or mental illness are being recognised, says Bolton, but those with personality disorder, which she defines as chronic and persistent psychological dysfunction and emotional instability, are not being dealt with either at the point of sentence or when released into the community. Bolton believes that the 50% reduction in recall rates has been achieved safely – ie with no further incidents.

“The project works by psychologists training frontline probation staff to improve their skills and to work more effectively with offenders who have a personality disorder so they can better refer their difficult cases to the mental health services rather than be relieved of them.”

To read the whole article, please follow this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/22/positive-impact-prisons-offenders-personality-disorder