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The Personality Disorder Community Service helps people with a diagnosis of personality disorder improve their social functioning, reduce their self-destructive behaviours and achieve a greater feeling of wellbeing.

What is a personality disorder?

Personality disorders are long-standing dysfunctional ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that cause distress to the person themselves and to others. The symptoms can be very disabling and confusing, can affect many different aspects of life and make it hard for them to cope and feel content. 

However, it is important to remember that, alongside this, there are areas of strength and ability and that it is possible to recover aspects of functioning that seem damaged.

What do we offer?

We offer a treatment programme using interventions based on National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance. It is likely to require about a year’s commitment overall. Our service provides:

• A new six-month engagement pathway that includes:
  • Assessment, formulation and treatment
  • Psycho-education workshops
  • Occupational therapy group
  • Recovery coaching
  • Daily crisis support
  • Medication review and management
     
• Onward progression to:
  • Our mentalisation-based group therapy
  • Our Relationship, Emotional Difficulties Service (REDS) dialetical behaviour therapy skills groups, with wrap-around one-to-one support also available. Click here for more details about REDS.

Core group

The Core group is a multi-agency forum led by the Personality Disorder Community Service to support staff and systems develop a shared understanding and negotiate ways forward for service users who may use multiple service, or for whom their needs may be difficult to meet.

Self-help, support and guidance

We have recently developed a virtual learning environment to support our service users and the community to understand difficulties associated with emotional regulation and relationship difficulties. 

We have included many of the resources we use in treatment so, even if you do not wish to join a treatment group, you can still become better informed and begin to learn how to support yourself and others. This is a new resource and therefore you might find that the content evolves and grows over time.

Click here for more details about this resource: Course: Self-Help, Support and Guidance for Relational and Emotional Needs

Families and carers

Family Connections is a 12-week online group programme that meets for two hours a week. It provides education, skills training, and support for people who are supporting a sufferer of borderline personality disorder. This is an evidence-based programme. Data show us that after completing the course, family members experienced decreased feelings of depression, burden, and grief, and more feelings of empowerment.

Family Connections is on offer to families and carers of service users in the Personality Disorder Community Service and Relational Emotional Difficulties Service.  Please contact the team directly for further information. 

If your loved one is not under the care of the Personality Disorder Community Service or the Relational Emotional Difficulties Service, you can still access the programme via the authors. Please click here to view the NEABPD website:  The Family Connections Program | National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder

For further information about supporting someone with emotional difficulties or a personality disorder, please take a look at our self-help, support and guidance virtual learning environment, which includes a section for family and carers.