Individual placement and support effectiveness for personality disorders compared with other mental disorders: a retrospective study

INTRODUCTION: People with personality disorders show severe work impairments. Individual Placement and Support is the most efficient vocational rehabilitation model for people with mental illnesses. However, no study has shown its effectiveness for people with personality disorders from different clusters. This study aims at comparing this program’s effectiveness in four groups: personality disorder clusters A, B, and C, and other mental disorders. METHOD: We conducted a retrospective record review study on supported employment follow-up data from four centres of the Community Psychiatry Wards of Lausanne University Hospital and the Nant Foundation (Switzerland). We selected all patients who participated in the programme between 2014 and 2020, except for those with unclear diagnoses and those with less than 9 months of ongoing follow-up as of 31 December 2020. Activity type, activity length, time before finding a job and income were compared between the four groups. RESULTS: Individuals with personality disorders clusters A (n = 26) and B (n = 97) had poorer vocational outcomes than those in Cluster C (n = 34) or without personality disorder (n = 309). Participants in cluster B showed the highest level of difficulty, specifically at finding employment CONCLUSION: Individual Placement and Support is less effective for participants with personality disorder clusters A and especially B than for other groups. A reconfiguration of the programme for this population who present significant work impairments might be warranted.