Group Schema Therapy (GST) is a closed long-term group designed to treat individuals with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The group provides an evidenced based treatment to service users.
GST helps service users to change their entrenched, self-defeating life patterns, or schemas, using cognitive, behavioural, and emotion-focused techniques. The treatment focuses on the relationship with the therapist, daily life outside of therapy, and the traumatic childhood experiences that are common in this disorder.
The group is broken down into 3 stages over an 18 month period: Stage one (months 1-3) are for bonding and emotional regulation; stage two (months 4-11) is the schema mode change period and; stage three (months 12-18) is the autonomy stage.
This is a day patient programme.