About
The aim of the national Personality disorder programme is to sustain successful initiatives, develop specialist expertise in the treatment of Personality Disorder and mainstream capabilities in Personality Disorder across our entire workforce in all agencies.
Over the past 10 years the government has produced a number of policy documents focussed specifically on ways of preventing personality disorder and providing appropriate treatment and care for clients, including:
- 1999 – Managing Dangerous People with severe Personality Disorder (DSDP)
- 2003 – Personality disorder: No longer a diagnosis of exclusion
- 2003 – Breaking the Cycle of Rejection: The Personality Disorder Capabilities Framework
- 2006 – Reaching Out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion
- 2007 – Mental Health Act
The Personality Disorder Programme started with the Government’s commitment to build the four ‘DSPD’ units, for dangerous people with severe personality disorder. The term ‘DSPD’ has been criticised, and these services are now usually called ‘for people who pose a high risk of harm to others’, or simply ‘Tier 6 PD Services’.
The community programme was for specialist local PD services, and 11 pilot projects with different structures were its main product. All of these are now commissioned by local PCTs as ‘tier 3’ (specialist) services. Five medium secure and community forensic specialist services followed (tier 5). Fourteen ‘Multi Systemic Therapy’ (MST) pilots for children then followed, of which two are in secure settings.
This was ‘phase 1’ of the National Personality Development Programme. The phase 1 pilot services were evaluated through 3 studies, with reports available from this site.
‘Phase 2’ is now under way, and has the aim of embedding what has been learnt in the development of mainstream provision, across sectors, throughout the country. Within this positive context of change, the national programme has recently published guidance for commissioners by reviewing what we know about personality disorder, government policy, clinical approaches and learning from the pilots, and by setting out a series of recommendations. Recognising complexity: Commissioning guidance for personality disorder services, is essential reading for anyone in our health, social care, education and criminal justice systems with responsibility for commissioning as they take up the challenge of recognising and addressing the complexity of personality disorder.