Bridging Affect Consciousness, Mentalization and Trauma- Exploring an Integrative Treatment Approach for Personality Disorder (PD).

Study background: Specialized Group Outpatient Clinic within specialist mental health services, tailoring two year group treatment programmes for severe Avoidant PD (AvPD) and Borderline PD (BPD) with Affect Consciousness (AC) targeting specific areas of emotional dysfunction. Aims: Our main hypothesis, adding AC to Mentalization- based treatment (MBT) to expand the breadth and depth of therapeutically productive work on affect, will aim to examine health indicators, processes and mechanisms of change in depth. The study will extracts preliminary data after 5 years and 10 years to investigate clinical change, variation and outcome during MBT for PD employing AC as add on to MBT. The study has a randomized controlled trail design, with MBT with or without AC as add-on. The RCT is grounded on original literature on Affect Theory, as a framework for understanding patient functioning, and MBT, framing the therapy.Implications: AC methodology as add on can lead to more tailored treatment programmes, service planning, allocation of resources, guidelines, ACI certification and method development for PDs.

NCT Number	NCT06983002
Lead Sponsor	Helse Stavanger HF Collaborators: Oslo University Hospital, University of Oslo, University College, London, University of Stavanger, Aalborg University
Conditions	Personality Disorder, Borderline, Personality Trait, Personality Disorder, Personality Type, Personality Disorder, Avoidant, Affect Consciousness, Mentalization, Reflective Functioning +3 more
Enrollment	300 participants
Start Date	2025-05-19
Primary Completion	2029-05-19 (estimated)
Study Completion	2035-04-19 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2025-05-21