Effectiveness of nursing intervention in short-term hospitalization for patients suffered from borderline personality disorder and self-harm. A narrative literature review

Introduction: Personality disorder sufferers with severe self-harm and experience long psychiatric hospitalizations have complex mental health conditions and are at risk of suicide. When the symptoms of emotional instability are combined with self-harm, the resulting crisis often becomes difficult for patients and caregivers to manage. To improve care during these crises, the Dutch Multidisciplinary Guideline for Personality Disorders designates “brief admission” (BA) hospitalizations as an ameliorative intervention. Objective: To describe the effectiveness of short hospitalization nursing care for people with borderline personality disorder and who practice self-harm, compared to ordinary hospitalization. Methods: A narrative review was conducted through the Embase and CINAHL databases, the selected articles had to answer the following research questions: “what are the observable benefits of short-term hospitalization on patients with borderline personality disorder?”; and “what are the benefits compared to short hospitalization operators?”. Results: Seven studies were selected. The results show that BA was perceived as an effective nursing intervention, which promoted the patient’s self-determination and self-care. This helped increase confidence in daily life and allowed people to maintain their daily routines, work, and relationships by decreasing long hospitalizations and increasing patient compliance. There has also been benefit from the staff, who report an improvement in work quality. Conclusions: This type of hospitalization has developed in Northern European states. BA has never been tested in the Italian healthcare sector. It would be appropriate and desirable, given the results obtained, to experiment with this procedure also in Italy to obtain specific feedback regarding the relationship of short-term hospitalization with our National Health Service. It is hoped that this research can be a stimulus in this sense.