Grounding clinical guidelines in service users’ experiences of endings

The purpose of this paper is to explore service users’ experiences of the process of ending from national health service (NHS) community personality disorder services.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants recruited from four NHS community personality disorder services.

Three main themes emerged; “Service users” experiences in the context of “Reflective versus Reactive practice”, “Endings held in mind” and “What next”?

Further recommendations are provided for practitioners supporting individuals managing endings alongside a “readiness to end” model which may be used in clinical practice.