A systematic review of dialectical behaviour therapy, mentalisation-based treatment and internal family systems therapy for borderline personality disorder with comorbid depression and/or anxiety

Francis, B, Fino, E and Heym, N ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2414-8854, 2026. A systematic review of dialectical behaviour therapy, mentalisation-based treatment and internal family systems therapy for borderline personality disorder with comorbid depression and/or anxiety. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 194, pp. 221-232. ISSN 0022-3956

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is highly comorbid with depression and anxiety, creating additional difficulty in treating the conditions and poorer prognosis than BPD alone. Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) and Mentalisation-Based Treatment (MBT) are specialised psychotherapies for BPD that have demonstrated positive effects for reducing BPD symptoms and scores on depression and anxiety measures. Although developed for treating PTSD, Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is effective for addressing past trauma that is also common in BPD. This systematic review investigated the effectiveness of DBT, MBT and IFS for treating BPD with comorbid depression and/or anxiety (BPD + D/A). Using the PRISMA protocol, five academic databases were searched for relevant studies and relevant treatment outcomes. Findings were extracted from 12 included studies. Only studies with a confirmed diagnosis of comorbid depression and/or anxiety disorders were included. This review found that DBT and MBT demonstrated significant reductions in BPD and depressive/anxious symptomatology, emotional and interpersonal difficulties, and impulsive behaviours. These therapeutic approaches also demonstrated reduced numbers of visits to emergency departments, reduced numbers of contacts with mental health services and reduced duration of contacts. None of the studies investigated IFS therapy outcomes for BPD + D/A. These findings are concordant with past research and have implications for increasing the use of DBT and MBT for BPD + D/A. Findings also demonstrate the effectiveness of brief DBT interventions as a more practical option for service users with BPD who experience frequent crisis periods and may struggle to commit to a traditional 12-month program. However, findings should be interpreted cautiously due to small and majority-female samples, mixed study designs and a lack of follow-up data.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Psychiatric Research
Creators:	Francis, B., Fino, E. and Heym, N.
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date:	March 2026
Volume:	194
ISSN:	0022-3956
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2026.01.002 DOI S0022395626000026 Publisher Item Identifier 2563380 Other
Rights:	© 2026 the authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	26 Jan 2026 21:09
Last Modified:	26 Jan 2026 21:09
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/55128

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads