Personality disorder service user help and support from Emergence

Psychological treatment is widely recognised as the best approach to supporting an individual given a diagnosis of personality disorder. Psychological treatment covers a very broad range of different types of talking therapies and treatments, most commonly in a one to one, group, or residential community setting. There are numerous approaches and ways of working, each based on different ways of understanding PD and how best to support people to change.

As well as medication and talking therapies, some people use complementary and alternative therapies to deal with and reduce the difficulties and 'symptoms' associated with PD diagnoses. The various therapies included within the complementary and alterative therapies description do not necessarily offer a 'cure', but can help people to deal with both the difficulties associated with PD diagnoses and with the side-effects of medication. At the moment, the evidence for these therapies is mixed: for some, there is some scientific evidence that they work for certain conditions; for others, the evidence comes from people's reports of their experience. However, these therapies can be useful to explore in addition to more conventional treatment.