Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common psychiatric disorder. Although DBT has been proven effective, in the treatment of this disorder, many patients suffering from BPD are resistant to taking part in group psychotherapy, a core aspect of DBT. With Internet use ever rising, online DBT could be an alternative effective treatment for these group of patients.

Understand the barriers in receiving DBT in patients with personality disorder and understand how online DBT could be helpful in improving these patients' symptoms

Use online DBT as an alternative method for patients who do not have access to live DBT

We gave the participants the opportunity to choose the online format or the live sessions for Managing Powerful Emotions program at Personality Disorders Service at Queen's university. On each session, patients were provided with information on a topic, homework sheets and feedback from the therapist. All the participants were assessed by using 'self assessment questionnaire' and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS).

The DERS scores among these two groups were not significantly different before the treatment. Statistical analysis showed that both online and live DBT significantly reduced DERS scores in all 6 categories and there was no significant differences in amount of the changes in the scores in the 2 groups.

Despite the proven efficacy of psychotherapy, there are some barriers, including being resistant to taking part in live sessions, long wait-lists and transportation. With Internet use rising, delivering online psychotherapy might be an alternative method.