Arts Psychotherapies Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) programme for Personality Disorder – Edinburgh.
Arts Psychotherapists are arts-based, Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC) registered clinicians. Our service offers psychological therapies across NHS Lothian. We take a primarily Psychodynamic approach to our work, with a Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) focus. We comprise the professions of Art Therapy, Music Therapy and Dramatherapy.
Our specific MBT programme is only for Edinburgh patients and is offered within Edinburgh’s Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs). It provides people who attract a diagnosis of Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD) with an evidence-based programme of Arts Psychotherapy oriented Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) to reduce symptom severity and improve relational functioning. The EUPD diagnosis must have been made within the last 5 years.
People who attract a EUPD diagnosis can experience intense and unstable relationships; difficulties reflecting on mental states of self and others; powerful self-destructive feelings and dangerous impulsive actions; and reduced ability to trust others as being helpful. MBT is an evidenced based treatment for these symptoms and can be delivered by Arts Psychotherapists with MBT training. A Cochrane review (Storebø et al 2020) has shown a reduction in symptom severity for patients following MBT programme at six, twelve and 18 months followup.
This programme involves access to a ten-week Psychoeducation group followed by a twelve-month MBT Arts Psychotherapies Group including three individual assessment sessions. Patients are prioritised from within existing CMHT patient caseloads with the criteria of EUPD diagnosis and demonstrating significant emotional dysregulation with consequential significant use of unscheduled care. Patients will remain open to the CMHT for the duration of the MBT programme. One group will run in each of the four Edinburgh CMHTs, with a capacity for 4 to 6 patients per group.
The active use of the arts can create enough distance and emotional safety for patients to begin to explore difficult and repetitive experiences from the ‘outside’ and start building the capacity to be open to alternative perspectives. The group aspect of treatment enables active work on relationship building (and what gets in the way) as well as powerful peer support.
Outcome aims
- Participants begin to find the world less threatening (hyper vigilance / fight or flight response less heightened) & and have strengthened reflective capacity
- Increased capacity to trust themselves and others and engage more freely in normal social learning
- Improved relationships (including healthcare providers) enabling care provided to be more effective (planned care rather than emergency care)
- Greater self-awareness and self-agency (less impacted by misunderstandings and conflicts)
- Less impulsive decisions and a greater sense of choice.
Further information on the Arts Psychotherapies Service, including contacts can be found here:
https://services.nhslothian.scot/artspsychotherapies
For general queries please contact:
loth.adminartspsychotherapies@nhs.scot
S.M, K.P & C.M – 13-8-26
Who can refer
- Specialist mental health teams
- GPs can refer to their locality mental health team to request consideration for the programme but cannot refer directly to Arts Psychotherapies.
Who to refer
Please note that all referrals from GPs are requests for consideration of the programme with the specialist team making the final decision about suitability:
- People registered with an Edinburgh GP that have a recent diagnosis of EUPD (last 5 years – ICD 11), and
- have an openness to use group treatment and the arts as an aid to self-reflection
- are at risk of inpatient admission due to high-risk behaviour
- make multiple use of unscheduled care
- have an identified compromised ability to seek and engage with care
- are already attached to CMHT or Psychiatric Outpatient care – complex service users benefit from coherent team working.
Who not to refer
- People whose needs are not complex
- People whose care is managed solely through primary care services
- People who are physically dependent on substance misuse (rather than emotionally dependent)
- People who have the capacity to respond to talking therapies (Psychological Therapies Services)
- People who are resident outside the Edinburgh CMHT sectors.
How to refer
Via SCI Gateway to the relevant local sector Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) with a specific request for Arts Psychotherapies MBT Programme where patients match the programme’s inclusion criteria (see above).
Requests will be triaged by the CMHT allocations meeting and taken forward by the Arts Psychotherapist if suitable.
