Personality disorder, treatment readiness and dropout from treatment in three community-based cognitive skills and violence reduction programmes

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between personality disorder (PD) treatment readiness and dropout from three community-based offending behaviour group programmes.

At the pre-programme stage, measures of PD and treatment readiness were administered to 186 offenders participating in either a cognitive skills programme, a general violence programme or a programme for domestically abusive men. Demographic and risk data were also obtained from the offender assessment system. At a one-year follow-up, comparisons were made between the risk, personality and treatment readiness profiles of programme completers and non-completers.

It was hypothesised that PD would be associated with low levels of treatment readiness at the pre-group stage and that both low levels of treatment readiness and PD would predict subsequent programme non-completion. Only antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) was associated with low overall treatment readiness, although antisocial, paranoid, schizoid, negativistic and borderline traits were associated with the facet of low self-efficacy. Non-completion was not predicted by younger age or recidivism risk scores and was most strongly predicted by the presence of a cluster A PD, as well as ASPD, low pre-group motivation and mixed race and white ethnicity.

Paranoid and antisocial personality pathology present important obstacles to effective offending behaviour group work in the community. This illustrates that further consideration needs to be given to these important responsivity factors in future delivery and evaluation of these programmes.

The study provides a detailed analysis of factors associated with non-completion of three community-based offending behaviour programmes in the UK.