Dialectical Behavior Therapy vs Enhanced Usual Care for Suicidal and Self-harming Adolescents. 10 Year Follow-up

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the long-term efficacy of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in treatment of adolescents with deliberate self harm compared to enhanced usual care (EUC). This study follows-up 77 patients in the ages of 12-18 yrs who have been included in an RCT of DBT-A vs EUC. The main inclusion criterion for this study was repetitive self-harm behaviour. The patients were randomly allocated to receive 16 weeks of outpatient DBT or EUC in child and adolescent psychiatric clinics in Oslo. Participants have been assessed so far on six different time-points: baseline (before starting treatment), 9 weeks, 15 weeks, 19 weeks, 71 weeks and 3 years after start of the treatment. In the current project patients will be assessed a 7th time 10 years after treatment completion. It is hypothesized that compared with participants who had received EUC in the original trial during their adolescence participants who had received DBT-A will: A) report a significantly lower frequency of episodes of self-harm, both last year and over the extended 10-year follow-up interval. B) be significantly less impaired with respect to social, family and occupational functioning and report a higher quality of life. C) have retained significantly fewer diagnostic criteria of BPD and have less severe borderline features according to dimensional measures and have significantly fewer signs of emotion dysregulation.