Compassion focused therapy for self-criticism for patients with personality disorders or post-traumatic stress disorders

Self-criticism is associated with a wide range of psychiatric disorders
including personality disorders (PDs) and post-traumatic stress disorders
(PTSD). Effective treatment of self-criticism may significantly reduce the
burden and improve the quality of life of these patients. However, conventional
treatments are only moderately successful in ameliorating self-criticism. An
alternative form of treatment which may offer a helpful strategy for decreasing
self-criticism in these patients is compassion-focused therapy (CFT). CFT is
aimed at cultivating compassion, particularly self-compassion, and facilitates
the ability to reduce self-criticism. Despite some preliminary, promising
evidence that patients with PDs and PTSD may benefit from compassion based
interventions in terms of mental health and well-being, it remains as yet
unclear whether the use of CFT may help patients with PD and PTSD decreasing
their self-criticism.

The primary aim of the current study is to examine whether CFT is effective for
reducing self-criticism in patients with PDs or PTSD.

A multiple baseline case series design with 3-7 weeks baseline phase, 12 weeks
treatment phase and a 6 weeks follow-up phase.

The CFT protocol consists of 12 sessions of 1-2 hours aimed at cultivating
self-compassion.

Patients will receive their usual care during the study. The burden of this
study pertains to 12 additional CFT sessions including homework assignments.
Participants are requested to weekly report, during the complete study period,
their perceived level of self-criticism via a visual analogue scale (0-100%).
Furthermore, questionnaires needs to be filled in at the start of baseline,
before and directly after the CFT phase, and at the end of the follow-up phase.
The risk for adverse events due to participation in this study is negligible,
the potential benefit of this study is that self-criticism may be reduced.