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Emergency department visits of patients with personality disorders often result in hospitalization. To learn whether a stepped-care program would help these patients postdischarge, researchers in Australia compared a community-based stepped-care program with treatment as usual (TAU) in 653 hospitalized patients with a primary diagnosis of personality disorder (based on International Classification of Diseases 10), who were randomized to two treatment centers (mean age, 37; female: 55% at TAU site vs. 46% at stepped-care site). For the first 18 months, both sites provided TAU. In a second 18-month intervention phase, one site continued to offer TAU, while the other delivered stepped care beginning within 36 hours of presentation.
The stepped-…