An acute change? Does treatment within a therapeutic community for personality disorders affect local acute service use

Abstract

Purpose

The intensive 18-month treatment in the personality disorder (PD) therapeutic community (TC) is felt to offer improvement in many aspects of patients’ lives. This study aims to understand if the use of acute services was also affected via a service evaluation project.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected data from electronic records on the use of local services in the two years before, during and the two years after treatment in the TC. Specifically, the authors counted inpatient bed days, Emergency department (ED) presentations and days under home treatment team and liaison psychiatry; the authors used ANOVA to analyse the data.

Findings

The study included 25 adult service users, 17 female and 8 male, with an average age of 40. Whilst there were reductions in the use of inpatient beds and ED presentations, on analysis, these were not found statistically significant. The small size of the study is a limitation and may limit the generalisability of the findings. The study concludes there may be reductions in acute psychiatric service use during and after treatment in the TC. The findings were not statistically significant; the authors suggest larger multi-centre studies may be able to demonstrate statistical significance.

Originality/value

PD patients have a relatively high use of acute psychiatric services compared to other patient groups. The authors are not aware of any similar studies in the published literature.

Citation

Pirjamali, V., Ivanova, D. and Howe, A.J. (2021), "An acute change? Does treatment within a therapeutic community for personality disorders affect local acute service use", Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Vol. 42 No. 3, pp. 113-120. https://doi.org/10.1108/TC-04-2021-0010