Specialized treatment for Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD): Treatment rationales and preliminary results

Objectives: The evidence base for treatment of AvPD is limited, and there is a need to develop and test new and integrative types of treatment approaches based on a clear understanding of the underlying psychopathology of the patient group. In this presentation, we provide treatment rationales and preliminary results from a specialized psychotherapy program developed for patients with AvPD treated at Stolpegaard Psychotherapy Centre, Capital Region of Denmark.
Methods: Treatment consists of individual therapy based on Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy (MIT) while group therapy is a modified form of mentalization based group psychotherapy which includes a more skill based behavioral component. All patients were assessed at baseline with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV axis II personality disorders (SCID-II). In this small naturalistic study, we followed patients from start to end of psychotherapy on a range of self-report measures including the SCL-90-R, IIP-C, SIPP-118 and TAS-20.
Results: In this preliminary report, we report findings from various time points of therapy: Baseline, 6 months, 12 months and after approximately 1½-years of therapy. We focus on how patients change in regards to important outcomes, including both acute symptoms and more personality based problems such as self-reflection, interpersonal problems and ability to describe feelings.
Conclusions: Consistency of results with regard to theories about AvPD will be discussed.