An evaluation of new services for personality-disordered offenders: Staff and service user perspectives

Background: Little is known about effective treatment for personality-disordered (PD) offenders. We aimed to obtain the perspective of service users and staff on: (a) the experience of receiving treatment; and (b) the experience of delivering treatment, within new forensic services for PD offenders. Material: Thematic analysis was applied to qualitative interviews with 30 service users and 22 staff. Discussion: Service users perceived that they were making positive changes in the areas of anger management, communication, self-harm, self-esteem and insight into their difficulties. Undertaking the clinical work was extremely stressful for staff. Conclusions: Forensic PD services may be having an important impact on the quality of service users’ lives. Whether treatment is successful in reducing long-term risk to others remains to be seen, and the cost-effectiveness of these services needs to be examined.