Service overview
The name of our service is Intensive Management of Personality Disorders and Clinical Therapies Team (IMPACTT).
We help you better understand the challenges you might have with personality disorders, which are sometimes called complex emotional needs.
We can guide you with ways to manage both your emotions, and how you relate to others (interpersonal issues).
Accessing our service
You must be aged 18 or over, and be referred to the Trust by your GP.
Your assessment
Following your One Team Mental Health Assessment we may offer you a further specialist appointment with our IMPACTT Team so we can better understand your needs.
We’ll ask you to complete some questionnaires, either at home or when you come to your appointment. The questions will cover topics like your lifestyle and personal habits.
DBT and MBT treatment
Based on your assessment, we may provide one of two psychological treatments. It could be Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT), or Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).
MBT is a relational treatment, and is improving your ability to understand the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours about yourself and others.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) focusses on developing skills to build the life you feel is worth living. We do this by reducing suicidal and self-harm behaviour, managing impulsive behaviours, and living in the present moment.
Both therapies are about understanding how to manage your emotions and relationships, and we’ll work with you to decide the right option to take.
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT)
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) aim to develop the skills you need to build the life you feel is worth living. This includes reducing suicidal and self-harm behaviour, managing impulsive behaviours, improving relationships with others, and living in the present moment.
DBT could help if you’re having intense emotional ups and downs, often associated with a diagnosis of Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD)/ Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
DBT pre-commitment
We can offer 4 to 6 sessions of pre-commitment to prepare for the DBT programme. You can use these sessions to set your goals for the therapy and learn about how DBT works. You’ll be invited onto the full DBT if we decide together that this programme feels right for you.
DBT programme
The DBT programme requires a 6-to-12-month commitment. You will attend individual therapy sessions every week, including a skills group. You can also use our telephone tips line.
Individual therapy
These sessions focus on recent or upcoming situations, rather than in the long-term past. It’s a great opportunity to learn and practice the coping skills you might need to manage your emotions.
Each session lasts up to around 1 hour, once per week.
We’ll provide you with a dairy for you to track your emotions and actions each day, which we can talk about in your session.
This could include any mental health struggles that you feel are causing you to have certain emotions, and the positive steps you can take to make life feel more meaningful.
If it’s appropriate, we can also cover reducing suicidal and self-harming behaviours.
Telephone tips line
These are required as part of the individual therapist between sessions.
Our therapist can offer tips on how to manage crisis, urges, or applying DBT skills. These are quite brief, and usually last around 10 minutes.
Skills group
These group sessions are about teaching and learning skills to improve your resilience. They’re not group therapy.
Each session lasts up to around two and a half hours, once per week.
There are four skills modules:
- Mindfulness: being fully aware and focused on the present moment instead of stressing about the past or worrying about the future.
- Emotion regulation: understanding emotions and how to manage them.
- Distress tolerance: learning how to cope with very difficult or stressful times without doing harmful things.
- Interpersonal effectiveness: learning how to ask for what we need and say no when necessary, set healthy boundaries whilst maintaining relationships with others and self-respect, making friends and letting go of harmful or unhealthy relationships.
Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT)
MBT is about enhancing your ability to understand and interpret the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of oneself and others.
It can be effective in improving personal relationship dynamics. This means learning the skills to process what you’re feeling about yourself and others, and how to express these effectively.
MBT encourages emotional regulation and self-awareness, to reduce conflicts with others.
The MBT treatment includes a 10-week introductory psychoeducational group, which is followed by weekly group and individual sessions for 18 months.
MBT-I
The group takes place weekly, and each session lasts for 1.5 hours. In week 11 we offer a session for families and friends you nominate where they can also learn about personality disorder and the MBT treatment. This session is for families and friends only, and you are not expected to attend.
We know that joining a group might bring feelings of anxiety, as we wonder what others think about us.
We aim to normalise these feelings through our MBT-I group, by increasing your motivation and preparing you for long-term treatment.
It is a psychoeducational group. This means that you’ll learn more about how we understand ‘personality disorder’, the role of emotions in our lives, and how mentalizing can help you with managing them, including anxiety and depression.
Terms like mentalizing and psychoeducational can sound complicated, but don’t be put off.
Weekly individual sessions
Alongside the group, you will be offered individual sessions with an MBT therapist. Usually, this will be someone else to group facilitators.
You will work on creating a Relational Passport, which describes your difficulties in relationships with others, which you will share with others in the group.
Weekly group sessions
The group meets weekly for one and a half hours.
Sessions focus on developing your sense of self and identity (the experiential self). Therapeutic goals are achieved through shared group experiences, and moving towards shared understanding of ourselves and others (we-mode).
Weekly topics are decided by the group members on the day by sharing experiences impacting their lives.
These sessions are the perfect chance to discuss and practice self-mentalizing, by reflecting on our thinking and emotional states, and mentalizing others, by being curious about other minds.).
We also explore interpersonal ‘events’, and how we mentalize in close relationships.
Carer support
Carers’ Awareness Tools and Support (CATS) is group programme.
It's aim is to increase knowledge of Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder/ Borderline Personality Disorder and improve communication between family members and the cared for person.
We work with carers as part of the triangle of care (which is a therapeutic alliance between the service user, our staff and the carer) to promote safety, support recovery and sustain wellbeing.
** Add link to Carers Information ***
Books
You can find more information about personality disorders in the following books, which you may be able to find in local libraries, or you can buy them online.
- Stop walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder, by Kreger Randy and Paul Mason
- The Borderline Personality Disorder: Everything You Need to Know About Living with BPD, by Alex Chapman and Kim Gratz
- Overcoming Borderline Personality Disorder: A Family Guide for Healing and Change, by Valerie Porr
- Oprah Winfrey and Dr Bruce Perry (2022). What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
- Rachel Reiland (2018). Get Me Out Of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
- Marsha Linehan (2020). Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir
- Bessel Van Der Kolk (2015). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Your e-Health Passport
Your e-Health Passport lets us know what's important to you - from your preferred name and pronouns to how you'd like us to support you and communicate with you.
Learn moreContact us and FAQs
Erlegh House
Understanding and Managing Personality Disorders
Contact number: 0300 365 8000
Email: IMPACTT.team@berkshire.nhs.uk
Post Address: RG6 6BZ
Location detailsAthena Centre
Understanding and Managing Personality Disorders
Contact number: 0300 365 8000
Email: IMPACTT.team@berkshire.nhs.uk
Post Address: SL1 2BJ
Location detailsFrequently asked questions
Why do I need to complete assessment questionnaires?
We use questionnaires along with other methods to help us track your progress against treatment over time, for both your mental and physical wellbeing.
Your answers can help us understand your current difficulties in a particular moment, and areas we can focus on in your therapy.
How much detail should I include in my questionnaire answers?
We encourage you to complete your questionnaires as honestly as you can.
We understand that you might find it difficult to explain your experiences in a single answer, and that your feelings about your experiences may change every day.
We suggest completing these by providing responses that you feel best represents how you have been over the past week.
Remember that the questionnaires are not an assessment of you, or a test.
They’re a measure that help us make sure you’re receiving support that is right for you.
We can also help you with
Is there any information for friends, family and carers?
If you’re a family member/carer or you look after someone, there’s practical, financial, and emotional support available to you from a range of local communities and national organisations.
How do I request an interpreter?
We can provide language translation and interpretation support whenever you visit or contact us.
Tell our staff which language you prefer to use, and we will make sure the right communication support is in place for your assessment and treatment. Please let us know as early as possible so we can ensure the appropriate translation or interpreting support is available.
We offer a range of professional services to ensure everyone can understand and be understood:
- telephone interpreting
- video remote interpreting (VRI)
- face‑to‑face interpreting
- written translation
- British Sign Language (BSL) interpreting
How can I get information in an accessible format?
Anyone with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss has the right to receive information in a format that meets their needs. Under the Accessible Information Standard (AIS)—a legal requirement for all health and adult social care providers—we must ensure that people who use our services, including carers and families, can understand the information we provide and communicate effectively with us.
We can offer information in a range of accessible formats, including:
- British Sign Language (BSL)
- large print
- braille
- audio
- easy Read
- text message
- face‑to‑face support with a carer or advocate present
If you need information in any of these formats, please tell a member of our team and we will make sure your communication needs are met.
Are service dogs allowed to my appointment?
Yes. You are welcome to bring your registered service animal, such as a guide dog, hearing dog, medical alert dog, or other trained assistance dog to your appointment.
These animals are recognised as essential support and are permitted in most areas of our services.
To help us prepare, please let the team know before your appointment if you will be attending with a service animal. This allows us to make sure the environment is safe and comfortable for you, your animal, and other patients.
Please note that service animals may not be able to enter certain restricted clinical areas for safety or infection‑control reasons, but we will always work with you to find an appropriate alternative.
Treating our team with respect.
Respect is important.
We will be polite and kind and we expect that you treat our staff in the same way.
Abuse, hate and discrimination against our staff is unacceptable.
We will take strong action against anyone who is verbally, racially, physically, or sexually abusive to them.
This includes contacting the police to prosecute, and stopping future access to our healthcare services.
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