BPDFamily.com

Hello,

I am curious as to what the success rate of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT)  is for people with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Also how does one-on-one DBT compare to couple’s oriented DBT where both the person without BPD and the BPD individual participate?

Thank you

hi Deep Blue,

this may be the wrong board to ask; its a breakup board. youre unlikely to find success stories or optimism of any kind.

its also a complicated question, the short answer to which is that up to 77% of people no longer meet the criteria for BPD after one year of DBT therapy.

My daughter has BPD. She was diagnosed as a teen (16?) and received intensive therapy and DBT. She's 23 now and has been in a relationship for 6+ years and is high functioning. She is not cured but she is very aware of her emotions and actions.  A few weeks back I mentioned to her that I wasn't sure if she would be considered BPD anymore - that I didn't see most of the symptoms remaining. She looked at the criteria and said she has 7 or 8 of them, so yeah, still diagnosable. The thing is that she can recognize and manage them. DBT gave her a lot of skills to help her recognize and manage the emotional turmoil she experiences and helped her understand her thought processes so that she doesn't unleash the kraken on her loved ones (most of the time - if she is hungry, then no guarantees. Also if something unexpected happens she has a hard time regulating that - as in, her car broke down in the middle of the street one day and she was panicking which threw her into an emotional tailspin...but these are uncommon and she recognizes these issues. It helps her to have a supportive family and boyfriend who know how to help bring her down without feeding the monster)

There is no quick fix and the person has to be willing to do the work but DBT was definitely helpful in giving her the tools to be able to manage her emotional state

Side note: Because she has a view to the inner (mental) world of a pwBPD, she has actually been invaluable with her insights during my discard with my BPD ex. She has helped me to understand the emotional dysregulation they go through and it seems like such a horrible thing to deal with. 

Yes, that's about what our mutual therapist said. However, how many stick around for a year? Not many according to her. She gave me the name of a group that did it in case he somehow decided he needed that. It wasn't something she did.

DBT works, but the problem isn't therapy itself. The problem is usually keeping the person engaged and going to therapy and keeping them on point. My niece has done spectacularly well with DBT. She has plenty of issues that has happened in her life and while she has symptoms of BPD, she was officially diagnosed with PTSD which was due to going through a horrible ordeal of sexual assault while she was in the military and then going through a rough relationship with someone I wouldn't be surprised was on the spectrum himself. She came back home after that and I had her stay with me so she could get back on her feet which she did. Obviously being my niece I have provided her plenty of counsel myself and did a lot of work with her. But I felt she would benefit immensely from seeking out a therapist that specialized in DBT. So I recommended it to her and explained it to her. She did ultimately listen to me and has been going to therapy with that therapist for about a good year and a half now. She has made a lot of progress. Has a relationship with a healthy nice man and is sticking with her current job with no problems.

Just figured I would share some optimism.

Cheers and best wishes!

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Yes, certainly there are people that get better. It's more likely if they are younger and of course open to that, which she was.

My therapist knew of several and said that it certainly was possible.

Hate to be the buzzkill, but it's worth mentioning that there are plenty of people who don't get better.

My best friend from high school has been hospitalised several times since her diagnosis sixteen or seventeen years ago, did intensive therapy for several months at an acclaimed private sanatorium, kept going to DBT for years thereafter... and while she's always been high-functioning on the academic and later professional level, she still has an extremely hard time with personal relationships.

Last time I saw her was a couple of months ago when she suddenly appeared (we live in different countries now) and we had coffee together. We hadn't seen one another in ten years' time and only had an hour, and she spent it ranting non-stop about how miserable her existence was, how she had (nearly) wrecked the lives of many an ex-lover, how she was currently supposed to show up to therapy sessions five times a week, how she constantly thought about killing herself and that she felt worthless etc. It was really difficult to see her hurting so badly. She's a beautiful woman in her prime years and a competent, diligent surgeon, but everything that goes beyond the mechanical precision and predictability of her job completely overwhelms her – despite almost two decades of therapy.

Point being, DBT may work for a lot of cases, but there are also plenty where it doesn't. It's definitely no magic bullet.

Sappho...100% agree. Very important point. There is no magic bullet. And you are not being a buzzkill. You are just being real. Your response was necessary. You sharing what you did is important to provide perspective.

Cheers and best wishes!

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