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.