Mentalization-based therapy is gaining popularity among people for treating borderline personality disorder and other related personality disorders. But is it effective? How does it work? When is it prescribed? If you have these questions in mind about MBT, keep reading this article to learn everything you need to know about MBT. Visit the best Mental Health Clinic in Brooklyn at Doral Health & Wellness or log on to www.doralhw.org.
Common FAQs answered
These FAQs will help you understand everything you need to know about mentalization-based therapy.
- What is mentalization-based therapy?
Ans. It is a type of long-term psychotherapy where mentalization is used to treat different personality disorders, particularly borderline personality disorder (BPD). Mentalization is the ability to understand how you think about yourself, and your actions based on your intentional mental state. If mentalization is successful, you can understand what is going on in your mind and in the minds of other people to realize how it affects your emotions, thoughts, and actions. This understanding helps to gain better perspectives for better interactions and improve your social relationships.
- When is MBT prescribed?
Ans. Typically, MBT is advised to anyone who has borderline personality disorder (BPD) when their interpersonal relationships are challenged. It is considered a transdiagnostic therapy used for a wide range of conditions, such as:
- Other personality disorders
- Eating disorders
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Trauma
- Drug addiction
It is very useful for people who live with long-term difficulties in relationships and experience intense emotional distress and overwhelming feelings, which may result in destructive behaviors such as self-harm and aggression towards others. It also helps people who may be distrustful of other people and have difficulty reading other people’s responses to them. However, more research is needed to improve the qualitative and quantitative evidence of MBT across diagnoses.
- What techniques are used in MBT?
Ans. The main goal of MBT is to get your mentalization patterns back on track from a non-mentalized state. To do so, your therapist will focus on your mental state, including your thoughts, feelings, and desires. Your therapist tries to stabilize your emotions in therapy by helping you understand how your mind works, and how the minds of others work. The specific techniques used in MBT vary widely, as many interventions can be used to enhance a person’s capacity for mentalization. The core process with your therapist may look like:
- Empathizing with your current subjective state
- Identifying the effect and developing an effect-focused plan for you
- Explore, clarify, and challenge emotions and feelings
- Mentalizing within the therapeutic relationship
By following these steps, your therapist will regulate your initial emotional response, review that response and see how it made you feel, then examine your reactions that influence your therapist’s thoughts and emotions. Through a variety of techniques used in MBT, practitioners keep a specific therapeutic stance throughout their sessions, which typically involves curiosity and patience as the therapist and person in therapy explore different perspectives. In these instances, the therapist will accept different perspectives and question you about your experience while maintaining awareness of the mentalization process. These therapy sessions offer space for understanding mental processes that happen within and beyond therapy.
- How does MBT work?
Ans. MBT works by helping patients to think before they can react to their feelings or the perceived feelings of others. This improves their ability to mentalize; patients are not only able to process their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors differently, but also understand other people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which may differ from their interpretation.
The goal of mentalizing is for patients to understand themselves better and also improve their theory of mind regarding others, like what may be driving other people’s thoughts and behaviors. This ability helps patients avoid misinterpreting another person’s meaning and respond appropriately to them. Studies have shown that mentalization for BPD patients shows improvement in depressive symptoms, there’s a decrease in suicidal and self-mutilation thoughts, and better social and interpersonal functioning, among other outcomes. Session frequency will differ; some therapists recommend two sessions a week, both one-on-one with your therapist as well as group treatment, where sessions can last for 12 to 18 months or more.
- What to expect during an MBT session?
Ans. During an MBT session, you get more of a talk-based approach about the present moment and your dynamic within that setting. For instance, your therapist will ask you about how you feel talking about your experience that happened recently during the session. In this way, your therapist works as a guide to show the direction of your emotions and behaviors. This displays your current thoughts and feelings, and how to recognize your mental state and that of others. You may be asked to describe your thoughts and feelings or think about what you said. This creates an opportunity to understand the misunderstanding and demonstrate the skill of mentalization right in the moment. In MBT, your therapist serves as a window to get a glimpse of how an affective state is influencing someone else.
- How effective is MBT?
Ans. Clinical trials found that MBT is an effective treatment for BPD, which shows improvement in their symptoms after the end of the treatment. Ongoing research studies on MBT effectiveness in many other conditions, like antisocial personality disorder, eating disorders, depression, and drug addiction, are showing positive results.
- How long will it take to complete MBT treatment?
Ans. Usually, individual mentalization-based therapy sessions last for 60 minutes, while group sessions last anywhere between 75 to 90 minutes based on your treatment program. The complete MBT treatment program lasts for 12 to 18 months.
Mentalization-based therapy is an effective treatment for borderline personality disorder, especially when your thoughts lead to disruptive behaviors towards others and harm your interpersonal relationships. It utilizes mentalization to help you understand your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors towards others while understanding their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is a proven treatment to improve BPD symptoms, but it is not for everyone because not everyone is comfortable sharing their feelings and emotions. So, make sure you discuss this with your mental health professional before considering this therapy.
Need help with BPD? Visit our behavioral health clinic in Brooklyn to get professional medical help. For further inquiries, call us on +1- 718-367-2555 to get a consultation. We have some of the finest psychiatrist doctors who listen to your concerns, examine your symptoms, and create a treatment plan to improve your condition as soon as possible. If you need help learning coping methods, register your information and make direct contact with our doctors and psychiatrists to learn those methods, log on to www.doralw.org. Visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11212.
