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Objectives. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of Cognitive Evolutionary Therapy (CET) in an intensive short residential treatment of a wide range of severe personality disorders (PDs) that resulted in a reduction of social functioning and significant personal distress. Design. Each patient was assessed at admission, discharge, and 3 months later in order to determine if there was a reduction in symptoms and an improved adherence to former outpatient programs and to check if patients were undergoing new treatment after discharge. Method. Fifty-one patients participated in this study. The 20-hr weekly program consisted of two individual sessions and various group modules. Outcome measures included: self-reported measures of depression, anxiety, general symptoms, number and duration of inpatient admissions after the programme, and continuation in an outpatient treatment programme. Results. The results show an overall improvement in general psychopathology after the release and in follow-up sessions, a decrease in the number of further hospital admissions, and an increased level of attendance of outpatient therapy. Conclusions. This study shows that intensive short residential treatment is an effective treatment for patients with a wide range of PDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Mentalization has recently been identified as a major process in the origins, maintenance, and recovery from various mental disorders. Aims. Questions arise however, as to the degree to which deficits in mentalization can be trait or state-like: whether they manifest themselves across all types of humaninteraction, or are they relationship dependent, such that different types of relationship (e.g., affiliative vs. competitive) can facilitate or compromise mentalizing? Findings. This paper suggests that mentalization has a complex evolutionary history, has various subtypes and functions, is highly regulated by the experience of threat or safeness within relationships, and can operate differently in different types of socialrelationship. Implications. Awareness of this enables therapists to pay particular attention to the social roles and types of relationships in which mentalization occurs, its specific focus and functions for specific types of relationships. Therapists can be mindful of the kind of specific events in social roles that activate threat and loss of mentalizing (e.g., abandonment threats, feeling controlled by 'the other', status loss, non-reciprocation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]