Background: Psychotherapy is the recommended treatment for borderline personality disorder in guidelines worldwide and the beneficial effects of psychotherapy are undisputed. Diagnostic criteria however makes for a largely heterogenic patient group, and people with borderline personality disorder do not necessarily present clinically with the same symptomatic behaviors. Some people might have a better effect of some types of psychotherapy compared to others but information regarding predictors and moderators of treatment effects across psychotherapies is yet to be unfolded.
Objective: The IPD-BPD project investigates whether characteristics such as age, gender, comorbidities and other personal and clinical variables can affect treatment outcomes in psychotherapy for people with borderline personality disorder. Identifying such variables is key in guiding the clinical treatment choice so it matches the individual optimally and exerts the best possible effect.
Method: We used individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses to investigate predictors of treatment effects on specialized psychotherapies compared to treatment as usual, other active treatments or waitlist/no intervention in people with borderline personality disorder. The IPD-BPD project investigates the three outcome sets: borderline symptom severity and interpersonal functioning, self-harm and suicide related outcomes, and quality of life and psychosocial functioning. We searched for randomized controlled trials in 21 databases and trial registries and included trials, extracted data and assessed risk of bias following Cochrane standards. Authors of all included trials were contacted with data requests and invitations to participate in the project. Data was checked and harmonized into one large IPD database, and the one-step analysis approach was applied.
Results: Preliminary results on predicting variables of treatment effects in the project outcomes will be presented.