AUTHOR=Søndergaard Amanda Ark , Juul Sophie , Poulsen Stig , Simonsen Sebastian 

TITLE=Mentalizing the therapist – Therapist experiences with short-term mentalization-based therapy for borderline personality disorder: A qualitative study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1088865

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1088865

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=Background: Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) was originally developed as a structured psychotherapy approach developed to treat borderline personality disorder (BPD) lasting up to 18 months in outpatient settings. However, a short-term (5 months) MBT program has recently been developed. No studies have investigated how MBT therapists experience the shift towards conducting short-term MBT for BPD. 
Objective: The objective of this study was to explore therapist experiences with conducting short-term MBT for outpatients with BPD in the Danish mental health services.
Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with seven therapists about their experiences with short-term MBT after a one-year pilot phase. The interviews were verbatim transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results: The following four major themes from the therapists’ experiences with short-term MBT were found in the qualitative analysis: 1) The longer the better, 2) Change processes can be intellectual or experiential, 3) Short-term therapy is hard work, and 4) Termination is more challenging in short-term MBT 
Conclusions: Most therapists were overall reluctant towards changing from long-term to short-term MBT. These therapist experiences could inform implementation of short-term MBT in mental health settings in the future.