Background and aim
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe and prevalent psychiatric disorder. Long-term outpatient mentalization-based therapy (MBT) is an evidence-based intervention for BPD, but it is resource demanding. No previous trial has compared short-term MBT with long-term MBT.
Methods:
The Short-term MBT Project (MBT-RCT) is a single-centre, parallel-group, randomized clinical superiority trial. Adult outpatients (≥18 years) with subthreshold or diagnosed BPD were randomly assigned (1:1) to short-term (5 months) or long-term (14 months) MBT using a web-based system. The primary outcome was BPD symptoms assessed with the Zanarini Rating Scale for Borderline Personality Disorder. Secondary outcomes were functional impairment, quality of life, global functioning, and severe self-harm. All outcomes were primarily assessed at 16 months after randomization. Outcome assessors, data managers, statisticians, the data safety and monitoring committee, and the writers of the manuscript were blinded to treatment allocation. This trial was prospectively registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03677037.
Results
Preliminary results from the MBT-RCT trial will be presented.
Conclusion
This trial will provide evidence of the beneficial and harmful effects of short-term compared with long-term MBT for outpatients with subthreshold or diagnosed BPD.