Effectiveness of a 24 Hour Phone Line on the Rate of Suicide Attempts in Borderline Patients

Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris

Status: Completed

Conditions: Borderline Personality Disorder

Treatments: Other: treatment as usual; Other: 24 hour phone line

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00603421

AOM 05062

Details and patient eligibility

About

This randomized multicentric clinical trial assesses the effectiveness of 24 hour phone line on the rate of suicide attempts and self-injurious behaviors in borderline patients.

Full description

Borderline personality disorder is very frequent among psychiatric populations, and chronic suicidality is a major problem in clinical practice with borderline patients. In a lot of countries, suicide prevention centers are available, but most of these centers are not supervised by professionals of mental health, and none is specifically oriented to the borderline population.

The main goal of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a 24 hour crisis phone line on the rate of suicide attempts in a clinical population of borderline patients (the effectiveness of this phone line access on the rate of self-injurious behaviours will also be studied).

In this multicentric controlled trial, 600 borderline patients (men or women, in or out-patients, between 18 and 40 years-old) are randomized in two arms :

• one with treatment as usual
• one with treatment as usual, PLUS one year of access to a 24 hour crisis phone line (with a team of psychiatrists specialized in borderline personality disorder).

All patients are assessed with standardized instruments (interviewers are blind to the patient's status), at entry (T1) and one year later (T2).

Enrollment: 318 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 40 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 to 40 years old
• in or out-patient in one of the recruiting center
• men or women
• with a borderline personality disorder
• written informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• inferior to 18 or superior to 40 years old
• schizophrenia
• severe somatic disorder
• participation refusal
• participation to another interventional study

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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318 participants in 2 patient groups

1

Experimental group

Description:

Patient benefits from treatment as usual plus access to a crisis 24 hour phone line.

Treatment:

Other: 24 hour phone line

2

Active Comparator group

Description:

Patient benefits from treatment as usual

Treatment:

Other: treatment as usual