BRIEF HOSPITAL TREATMENT PLANS FOR PERSONS WITH BORDERLINE PERSONALITY-DISORDER - PERSPECTIVES OF INPATIENT PSYCHIATRIC-NURSES AND COMMUNITY MENTAL-HEALTH-CENTER CLINICIAN

Despite growing recognition of the challenges inherent in helping pers ons with borderline personality disorder, systematic investigation of caring for this population in specific treatment situations is lacking . In this study, an innovative hospital treatment program for persons with borderline personality disorder was evaluated. Using an interpret ive phenomenological approach, a term of researchers analyzed data fro m in-depth, individual interviews with inpatient psychiatric nurses an d community mental health center clinicians (n = 13) and thereby ident ified a constitutive pattern, the paradoxes of helping. At a time when innovation in caring for persons with this disorder is sought, an exa mination of these paradoxes will help identify those practices to be a bandoned, those to be extended, and those to be preserved. Copyright ( C) 1994 by W.B. Saunders Company