ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of mentalisation based treatment (MBT) to treat people with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and the emerging evidence base for its effectiveness in treating Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) as these conditions are over-represented in forensic settings. Forensic settings are taken to include prisons, secure psychiatric units and community-based forensic services. The chapter discusses how a failure of mentalisation can precipitate some forms of violence and therefore how MBT allows a focus on both psychological change and the drivers behind some offending behaviour. Mentalisation allows the individual to process experience and to represent and distinguish between mental states of the self and of the other. Trauma, maltreatment and exposure to violence, disorganise the attachment system, disrupt the development of mentalisation and compromise affect regulation. In their developmental model of violence, the capacity to mentalise is thought to be a crucial inhibitory factor for interpersonal violence.
