Clinical Topics in Personality Disorder

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Personality disorder used to be a diagnosis of exclusion, a condition deemed 'untreatable'. This situation has been transformed in the past 10 years, with a huge expansion of research and clinical interest in personality disorders: what it is like to have a personality disorder, what sort of services are helpful, what treatments work best and what staff need to know. This book provides an expert synthesis of these clinical advances. It covers the nature of personality disorders, assessment, diagnosis and classification, management and a broad range of therapies and approaches. Written by practitioners with real expertise in the field, the book is equally suitable for psychiatric trainees and more experienced clinicians from the full range of disciplines in mental healthcare. Systematic, authoritative and well-referenced accounts of 20 key clinical topics relating to personality disorder are presented. These include: acute settings; community services; service user viewpoints; personality disorder in women, adolescents, and the elderly; cognitive analytical therapy; nidotherapy; skill-based and insight-based therapies; and therapeutic communities. Five chapters have been specially commissioned for this book, while previous versions of the other 15 chapters have been published in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment - many have been extensively updated by the authors.