The topic for this paper is the use of psychotherapy for personality disorders. Psychotherapy is
an important role in many psychological disorders. Even though psychotherapy is generalized, it
does not work the same way in terms of treatment for all psychological disorders. Personality
disorders are looked at as untreatable, the importance of this paper is to discuss how
psychotherapy does work in some cases of personality disorder. This is based on how the
therapist chooses to approach the patient. My three subsections I will discuss are 1. Summarize
the article. 2. The efficiency of Psychotherapy for personality disorders, 3. How the relationship
between a patient and therapist helps with psychotherapy treatment. 4. The conclusion of the
paper.
Article #1
In the article “Psychotherapy for Personality Disorders: Questions of Clinical Utility” by
Kramer and Levy discusses the way psychotherapy has been effective in certain cases for people
with personality disorder. Personality disorders are likely to be treated with high doses of
medications. For psychotherapy to be effective for a person living with a personality disorder the
therapist must create a strong, quality relationship with the patient (Kramer & Levy, 2016). This
bond helps commonly because a patient with PD will have interaction problems. There is more
success in psychotherapy when the therapist’s characteristics are strong in dealing with the
interaction problems. With these circumstances dealt with properly, psychotherapy has a very
successful rate, “the rate of recovery for PDs might differ between therapy approaches, within an
optimum of approximately 100 sessions for psychotherapies for PD to be effective” (as cited in
Kramer & Levy, 2016. p.xx ).
In some countries, the use of hospitalization or partial hospitalization are favored
(Kramer & Levy, 2016). When a patient is in hospitalization or partial hospitalization treatment
for personality disorders contains daily activities over a short or long period of time that are
methodized. With this treatment, the therapists found that for more severe PD the rates were
successful in long-term (6-12 months) treatment, with less severe PD the rates were successful in
short-term treatment. In the even of a partial hospitalization, the therapists still held
psychotherapy as an outpatient program to be able to expand on the partial hospitalization
treatment (Kramer & Levy, 2016). In 1999 there was a study done to determine the dosage in a
treatment approach in a community environment. “For how long and how intense should the
treatment be?” (as cited in Kramer & Levy, 2016. p. xx), at the time the study was based on four
outpatient studies. The results estimated that about 25% of patients with PD recovered after 5
months of treatment, 50% after 15 months (90 sessions), 75% after 26 months (200 sessions)
(Kramer & Levy, 2016). Without a proper dosage in treatment and different treatment routes, the
average amount of sessions was roughly 100 sessions for psychotherapy to be effective in the
case of personality disorders.
In terms of treatment, there is no specific approach, for the therapist, it is difficult to use
common strategies. The relationship between the patient and therapist is most important in using
psychotherapy to treat a personality disorder because there is often variation in interpersonal and
intrapersonal of the mental states shown in the patients. The ideal therapist for psychotherapy of
a personality disorder must have many traits: an open-minded approach with flexibility,
creativity, and patients, they must be comfortable with an intense long-term relationship, must be
intrapersonal to their own negative effects, lastly the therapist must have specified training for
personality disorders (Kramer & Levy, 2016).
Overall for psychotherapy to be effective in treatment, the therapist has a great deal of
effect on the success rate, the therapist must have the specific training for the disorder they are
trying to treat. Regardless of outpatient treatment or in hospital treatment the average amount of
time to partially treat personality disorders varies between 6-24months. The authors Kramer and
Levy would like to see more research done in terms of training for quality of intervention facing
these patients, particularly long-term training programs. In the end there isn’t a particular way of
how to deal with patients suffering from personality disorders and the only true effectiveness
shown with psychotherapy is the relationship that the therapist is able to create with the patients
and in the long run putting more focus into the training of these therapists will contribute to an
even higher success rate in psychotherapy in relation to personality disorders.