Use of the ‘emerging personality disorder’ label in young people has been a controversial topic amongst CAMHS clinicians. Following discussions in a CAMHS focus group, we formally explored the views and experience of CAMHS clinicians across teams in Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust with the view to gain more understanding of the different stances of the clinicians, the reasons behind them and to inform future care pathways.

The service evaluation was approved by Humber NHS FT CAMHS Clinical Network and Clinical Audit Team and conducted across the Humber CAMHS service, made up of multi-disciplinary professionals including medical, psychological, therapy, nursing and social work clinicians. Data were collected prospectively, using an anonymous online survey design, with Likert scale and open-ended questions, with the option of additional comments. Consent was gained form all participants. Qualitative data collected from the open-ended survey questions were analysed using thematic analysis as described by Braun and Clarke (2006). Researchers were blind to the demographic variables of respondents, in order to promote anonymity. Authentic anonymous citations were used to illustrate the findings.

A total of 50 survey responses were received from CAMHS clinicians from 9 teams. Clinicians’ views of the helpfulness of the label of ‘emerging personality disorder’ within CAMHS (n = 49): 22.4% found it helpful (very or somewhat) to staff; 21.3% helpful to families; 65.4% found it unhelpful (somewhat or actively) to staff and 63.8% unhelpful to families. 47 responded to the optional open-ended questions eliciting experiences and views of the use of the label. Qualitative analysis revealed evidence of polarity of opinion, particularly in perceived consequences for the young people and families, and identified three major themes: a shared developmental and trauma-informed understanding; the perceived impacts associated with the label of ‘emerging personality disorder’ (9 subthemes); and clinicians’ proposed next steps. There was a shared understanding of the role of interpersonal trauma and invalidation, resulting impacts on the development of skills in emotion regulation and interpersonal relationships.

Our findings highlighted the polarity of the views, the lack of consensus in the use of this label amongst CAMHS clinicians and the importance of discussions around future pathways. There is a need to consider the view of experts by experience (young people and families who have been through this process) to consider the short and, more importantly, the long term impacts of living with a label of ‘emerging personality disorder’.