What is helpful? Determining effective and meaningful support for social workers who work with people with borderline personality disorder

Previous studies have shown that when working with individuals diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), clinicians can face challenges including negative attitudes towards their clients, professional distress and feeling like they are not equipped to provide treatment. In turn, clients diagnosed with this disorder often experience stigma related to their diagnosis, lack of treatment options or dissatisfaction in the treatment that they receive. Clinical supervision is recommended in the literature as one way to address some of these issues, however, clinical supervision is not widely available. Using an Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) theoretical framework, this qualitative study endeavoured to understand what clinicians find to be effective and meaningful support in the absence of, in addition to, or specific to clinical supervision when working with clients diagnosed with BPD. Six social workers working in community mental health were interviewed. Theme analysis was used to examine the collected data. Themes related to experiences with supervision, challenges working with client with BPD, peer support needs, and BPD stigma were identified. These findings also suggest future research, policy and practice implications in this area to address the challenges of related to service provision for individuals diagnosed with BPD.