Therapeutic assessment in patients with personality disorders

The degree to which clinical assessment has treatment utility (i.e. enhances meaningful outcomes for patients) is a topic of ongoing controversy. Empirical data from well-designed studies on this issue are quite scarce. However, accumulating evidence suggests that Therapeutic Assessment (TA) can be an effective intervention in a diversity of populations (Aschieri, De Saeger, & Durosini, 2015). TA is an assessment-driven therapeutic intervention that helps clients to develop new representation of themselves and the world (Finn, 1996). The full model of TA was never tested and most research did not conduct randomized comparisons and/ or were of low sample size. Moreover, the efficacy of TA in clients with Personality Disorders (PD) has not yet been examined. We present a conceptual analysis suggesting that features of TA and the specific clinical needs of clients with PD are well matched. In short, the main objective of this thesis was to conduct a stringent test of the treatment utility of the full model of TA in patients with personality disorder. Part A of this thesis provides a general description of the TA model and provides a clinical case example. Part B reports on a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). To get a deeper understanding of the findings of the RCT we conducted a qualitative follow-up study asking these clients what they deemed memorable about their TA experience.