Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a distressing and serious mental illness that is most common in adolescents and youth. Families and carers of those with BPD experience high levels of distress and burden and can struggle to support those with BPD. The Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) Families and Carers Training and Support program (MBT-FACTS) is an innovative five-session skills and education program for family members and carers of someone with BPD, informed by MBT principles, and designed in collaboration with carers. The program was co-delivered by a carer and a clinician.
A delayed-treatment RCT was conducted across two cohorts (2019 & 2021) where the intervention was delivered to carers of young people with BPD or emerging BPD aged 14 to 25 years. Carers completed pre and post measures of frequency of adverse incidents experienced with the young person, burden, wellbeing, mental health, and family functioning. To more fully understand the impact of the intervention from the perspective of the young people themselves, interviews were conducted with eight young people whose family members participated in the program. This is the first study that has directly asked young people with BPD about their experience of such an intervention for their carers.
Preliminary quantitative analysis has revealed improvements in decreased family burden and increased psychological health for carers comparing pre and post intervention. Follow up interviews with young people showed that they felt there had been positive changes during and after their family members’ participation in the program. They felt the communication with their family members improved, they were more understood, had more space and freedom at home, and felt that the tension in the household decreased. The findings indicate that interventions focusing on building understanding and self-awareness in carers of those BPD can be important in ameliorating the challenging impact of BPD both on the carers and on young people themselves.