The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of self-reported suicidality and distress during research assessments in a sample of 63 women meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder and current and chronic suicidality. The risk management protocol we used during the two-year study period (University of Washington Risk Assessment Protocol; UWRAP) is described. Results indicated that changes in suicidality following assessments were small and relatively infrequent, and were just as likely to reflect decreases in suicidality as increases (17.5% versus 16.4% of sessions, respectively). Further, longitudinal analyses indicated that changes in suicidality became increasingly rare over the course of the 2-year study. Ratings of distress were more changeable than suicidality, underscoring the need for separate measurement of these constructs when assessing risk. With the aid of the UWRAP, our assessors judged 15 participants as high-risk status in 28 assessment sessions (3.7% of all sessions). In comparison to the rest of the sample, these individuals were of significantly greater clinical severity as measured by the HRSD 17-item, GAF scores, number and severity of previous suicide attempts, and number of previous psychiatric hospitalizations. Low-intensity risk intervention strategies (e.g., validating participant's feelings) were typically sufficient to reduce risk in these participants. Overall, our findings indicate that research with highly suicidal individuals can be done safely with the use of well-trained assessors and an appropriate crisis management protocol.

Worldwide, almost a million people die by suicide each year. Intentional, nonfatal, self-inflicted injury, including both suicide attempts and acts without suicide intent, also has very high prevalence. This article provides a practice-friendly review of controlled studies of psychosocial treatments aiming to prevent suicide, attempted suicide, and nonsuicidal self-inflicted injuries. Despite relatively small sample sizes for a low-base-rate outcome such as self-inflicted injury, several psychotherapies have been found effective, including cognitive therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, problem-solving therapy, and interpersonal psychotherapy, as well as outreach interventions, such as sending caring letters. The clinical implications of the review are discussed with the goal of translating the science to service-particularly the importance of outreach and treatment of non-compliance, the assessment and management of suicide risk, and competency in effective psychotherapies. These are critical steps for clinical psychology and psychotherapists to take in their role in suicide prevention.

To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of a program to manage Social Security disability benefits in a clinical sample of patients with severe mental illness and co-occurring substance dependence, 41 patients were randomly assigned to have their benefits either contingently or noncontingently managed through their mental health center. Contingent management involved adjustments to the type or frequency (not amount) of disability benefits and payments for study participation based on ratings of substance use, money management, and treatment follow-through. The patients with contingent management used significantly less alcohol and drugs and showed much better money management than those with noncontingent management. Patients and case managers who participated in the study reported that they found the management strategy to be acceptable and useful.

Objectives: To determine whether geriatric patients aged 65 and older on general adult psychiatric units improve as much as younger patients, over what duration their improvement occurs, and their risk of readmission.Design: Cohort study.Setting: Inpatient psychiatric unit of an urban, university-affiliated, county hospital from January 1993 through August 1999.Participants: A total of 5,929 inpatients.Measurements: Standardized, routine assessments by attending psychiatrists included the Psychiatric Symptom Assessment Scale (PSAS) on admission and discharge. Discharge scores, length of stay (LOS), and risk of readmission within 1 year were modeled for the groups using multiple regression analyses.Results: Geriatric patients constituted 5% (n=299) of the 5,929 admissions. In multivariate analysis, geriatric status was not associated with discharge PSAS scores. Median LOS was longer for geriatric patients (16 days) than younger patients (10 days, P<.001), especially in older women (14 days) and geriatric patients with mild medical illness severity (13 days vs 11 days in those with moderate-to-severe medical illness). Geriatric patients were as likely to be readmitted within 1 year of discharge as younger patients.Conclusion: Geriatric patients on general inpatient psychiatry units improved as much as younger patients. Their longer LOS was associated with milder medical illness severity. There may be a role for more specialized care of elderly women or geriatric patients with mild to moderate medical illness to improve the efficiency of their care.

OBJECTIVE:The research presented here was a pilot study to identify clinical factors associated with high use (as opposed to lower use) of inpatient psychiatric services by persons with borderline personality disorder.METHODS:The initial sample was a random sample of English- and Spanish-speaking persons aged 18 to 60 years who had received at least one outpatient mental health service in the previous 90-day period and were enrolled in one of the participating mental health centers in King County, Washington. A random sample of persons who met selection criteria was randomly drawn; persons with high levels of use were oversampled to ensure adequate representation. Twenty-nine participants met full criteria for borderline personality disorder on the Personality Disorders Examination structured interview and completed all measures. Fifteen (52 percent) of these had a high level of use of inpatient services, and 14 did not.RESULTS:High use of inpatient psychiatric services was predicted by a history of parasuicide in the previous two years but not by the number or severity of parasuicides; by the presence and number of anxiety disorders but not by depression or psychotic or substance use disorders; and by poorer cognitive functioning. Life stressors, global functioning, and health service variables did not differentiate patients with high levels of service use from other patients with borderline personality disorder.CONCLUSIONS:Further research should explore these predictors of service use to determine whether they are replicated in larger samples, and treatments that target these variables should be evaluated.

OBJECTIVEThe authors studied the psychometric properties and utility of the Problem Severity Summary (PSS), a 13-item instrument that assesses symptom severity and functioning among adults with severe and persistent mental illness.METHODSCase managers rated the PSS among more than 1,000 adults with severe and persistent mental illness who were receiving services at either mainstream community mental health centers or specialty community mental health centers (serving various minority groups) in one county in Washington State. A subsample of clients was used to assess the concurrent validity of the PSS with the Psychiatric Symptom Assessment Scale.RESULTSInterrater reliability was adequate for ten of the 13 PSS items. Four meaningful factors were derived, each with adequate internal consistency: community functioning, negative social behavior, affective distress, and psychotic disturbance. The PSS demonstrated adequate concurrent and predictive validity. Sensitivity of the PSS factors to change showed that scores on three of the four scales changed significantly over one year. Discriminant validity indicated that the PSS is generally unbiased in terms of demographic characteristics.CONCLUSIONSThe PSS is a brief, easily administered instrument that shows psychometric promise for use in clinical contexts, such as treatment planning, concurrent review of care, and guidance for level-of-care decisions, as well as for quality management purposes.

We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate whether dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a treatment that synthesizes behavioral change with radical acceptance strategies, would be more effective for heroin-dependent women with borderline personality disorder (N = 23) than Comprehensive Validation Therapy with 12-Step (CVT + 12S), a manualized approach that provided the major acceptance-based strategies used in DBT in combination with participation in 12-Step programs. In addition to psychosocial treatment, subjects also received concurrent opiate agonist therapy with adequate doses of LAAM (thrice weekly; modal dose 90/90/130 mg). Treatment lasted for 12 months. Drug use outcomes were measured via thrice-weekly urinalyses and self-report. Three major findings emerged. First, results of urinalyses indicated that both treatment conditions were effective in reducing opiate use relative to baseline. At 16 months post-randomization (4 months post-treatment), all participants had a low proportion of opiate-positive urinalyses (27% in DBT; 33% in CVT + 12S). With regard to between-condition differences, participants assigned to DBT maintained reductions in mean opiate use through 12 months of active treatment while those assigned to CVT + 12S significantly increased opiate use during the last 4 months of treatment. Second, CVT + 12S retained all 12 participants for the entire year of treatment, compared to a 64% retention rate in DBT. Third, at both post-treatment and at the 16-month follow-up assessment, subjects in both treatment conditions showed significant overall reductions in level of psychopathology relative to baseline. A noteworthy secondary finding was that DBT participants were significantly more accurate in their self-report of opiate use than were those assigned to CVT + 12S.

OBJECTIVE:Length of stay and treatment response of inpatients with acute schizophrenia were examined to determine whether differences existed between those with and without comorbid substance-related problems.METHODS:The sample comprised 608 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder treated on hospital units with integrated dual diagnosis treatment. They were rated on admission and discharge by a psychiatrist using a structured clinical instrument. Patients with no substance-related problems were compared with those with moderate to severe problems using t tests, chi square tests, and analysis of variance.RESULTS:When analyses controlled for age, gender, and other clinical variables, dually diagnosed patients were found to have improved markedly faster compared with patients without a dual diagnosis. Their hospital stays were 30 percent shorter on both voluntary and involuntary units. They also showed somewhat greater symptomatic improvement and no increase in 18-month readmission rates. On admission the dual diagnosis group was more likely to be younger, male, and homeless and more likely to be a danger to self and others. Severity of psychosis was the same at admission for the two groups, but the dually diagnosed patients were rated as less psychotic at discharge.CONCLUSIONS:Dually diagnosed patients with schizophrenia appear to stabilize faster during acute hospitalization than those without a dual diagnosis. The authors hypothesize that substance abuse may temporarily amplify symptoms or that these patients may have a higher prevalence of better-prognosis schizophrenia. The availability of integrated dual-focus inpatient treatment and a well-developed outpatient system may also have helped these patients recover more rapidly.

Providers of psychotherapy services are likely to become emotionally exhausted, to depersonalize their clients, and to have diminished personal accomplishment as a consequence of treating "difficult" clients. This pattern, termed burnout, has recently received considerable empirical attention. Whereas previous researchers have explored burnout as an occupational phenomenon, we propose that both therapists and clients experience burnout reciprocally; that is, both providers and recipients can become burned out from the therapy process. We administered a modified client version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach & Jackson, 1986) to clients receiving psychosocial treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD) both prior to therapy and 4 months into treatment and a modified therapist version of the MBI to their therapists. Vl predicted that client difficulty (depression, anger and suicidality) would be related to therapist burnout, and that high expectancies of therapy would be related to increased burnout for both clients and therapists at 4 months. Whereas the first prediction was not supported, we did find some support for the relationship between expectancies and burnout. Post hoc analyses also revealed an interesting pattern: The most reliable predictor of therapist burnout at 4 months was client burnout at pretreatment. Implications of this interaction between client burnout and the therapists' responses are discussed.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the criterion validity and responsiveness to change over time of the Minimum Data Set (MDS).DESIGN: Cross sectional analysis comparing prospectively collected research data with MDS data reported from nursing homes on identical subjects. Longitudinal follow-up of subjects allowed for calculation of responsiveness to change over time.PARTICIPANTS: Subjects (n = 140) participating in epidemiological research on the natural history of Alzheimer's disease in the University of Washington Group Health Cooperative Alzheimer's Disease Patient Registry (ADPR) who entered nursing homes in Washington State from January 1990 through March 1996.MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: Spearman's correlation coefficients to compare MDS cognitive performance scale scores with Mini-Mental State Examinations (MMSE), MDS behavior domain scores with ADPR Physician Behavior checklist scores, and MDS activities of daily living (ADL) functioning scores with Dementia Rating Scale scores for ADLs. Partial correlations were used to control for the number of days between MDS and ADPR assessments, age, and function in the other two MDS ratings of ADL, cognition, or behavior. We determined responsiveness by using the mean change in an effect size (ES) calculation for each domain of interest.RESULTS: MDS measures in all three domains were correlated modestly to the analogous ADPR research instruments, with correlation coefficients 0.45 for cognition, 0.50 for behavior, and 0.59 for ADL functioning. Controlling for age, time between ADPR and MDS assessments, and the MDS ratings of the other two MDS domains did not improve the correlations significantly. In a subgroup of 60 subjects followed for an average of 636 days, the Cognitive performance scale of the MDS had a slightly larger effect size (ES = 0.60) than the Folstein Mini-Mental Status Exam (ES = 0.39) used by the ADPR. However, the Dementia Rating Scale (ES = 0.77) used by the ADPR researchers reflected more change over time than the ADL domain of the MDS (ES = 0.02). The MDS behavior domain (ES = 0.058) was comparable to the research behavior checklist (ES = 0.065).CONCLUSIONS: These data demonstrate reasonable criterion validity of the MDS and the MMSE, ADL, and behavior rating scales and suggest that the MDS data is of adequate validity for research purposes in these areas. The MDS was less able to capture dementia-related change in ADLs in this population of patients with dementia even though the same nursing home staff completing the MDS often supplied the information for completing the research scales. As a result, the MDS may be limited as an outcome assessment instrument.

Background: This study tested the hypothesis that subjects with borderline personality disorder irrespective of the presence or absence of an Axis I mood or anxiety disorder would exhibit greater severity of depression and anxiety than subjects with either a personality disorder other than borderline personality disorder or no personality disorder.Method: Two hundred eighty-three subjects from an outpatient psychiatry clinic were administered the following assessments: the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID) for Axes I and ii, the Hamilton Rating Scales for Depression and Anxiety, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Subjects were categorized into borderline personality disorder, other personality disorder, and no personality disorder categories and into present versus absent categories on Axis I diagnosis of depression and of anxiety. A 2-factor multiple analysis of variance compared personality disorder status and Axis I diagnosis on severity of depression by observer rating and self-report. The analysis was repeated for anxiety.Results: As hypothesized, significant main effects were found for borderline personality disorder and for both depression and anxiety. Subjects with borderline personality disorder showed greater severity on both depression and anxiety rating scales than did patients with another personality disorder, who showed greater severity than did patients with no personality disorder. Axis I diagnosis was also associated with greater severity on depression or anxiety rating scales. These differences were found for both observer ratings and self-report. An interaction was also found for depression: Subjects with borderline personality disorder but without an Axis I diagnosis of depression rated themselves as more severely depressed on the Beck Depression Inventory than did subjects with another or no personality disorder who also had an Axis I diagnosis of depression.Conclusion: Implications from the study are discussed including the need to assess for borderline personality disorder in research studies of depression and anxiety and to integrate treatments for borderline personality disorder into depression and anxiety treatment to maximize clinical outcomes.