Negative Affectivity and Disinhibition as Moderators of an Interpersonal Pathway to Suicidal Behavior in Borderline Personality Disorder

2022 ◽  
pp. 216770262110566
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Allen ◽  
Michael N. Hallquist ◽  
Aidan G. C. Wright ◽  
Alexandre Y. Dombrovski

In this longitudinal study, we examined whether personality traits moderate the link between interpersonal dysfunction and suicidal behavior in a high-risk sample of 458 individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Participants were assessed annually for up to 30 years (mean number of follow-ups = 7.82). Using multilevel structural equation modeling, we examined (a) longitudinal, within-persons relationships among interpersonal dysfunction, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts and (b) moderation of these relationships by negative affectivity and disinhibition. Negative affectivity predicted a stronger within-persons coupling between interpersonal dysfunction and suicidal ideation. Disinhibition predicted a stronger coupling between ideation and suicide attempts. Assessing negative affectivity and disinhibition in a treatment setting may guide clinician vigilance toward people at highest risk for interpersonally triggered suicidal behaviors.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Allen ◽  
Michael Hallquist ◽  
Aidan G.C. Wright ◽  
Alexandre Dombrovski

Importance: Clinicians treating borderline personality disorder (BPD) are often faced with the difficult challenge of assessing when, and for whom, risk for suicide is greatest. Addressing this dilemma requires longitudinal, prospective data from high-risk samples with an elevated base rate of suicide attempts.Objective: To test whether dispositional characteristics modulate the pathway from interpersonal dysfunction to suicide in BPD. Design: This longitudinal, observational study was conducted between 1990 and 2020. Data were analyzed between April and July 2020. Participants were assessed annually for up to 30 years (mean number of follow-ups = 7.82). Setting: Participants were recruited from inpatient, outpatient, and community referral sources.Participants: 458 individuals (Mean age = 28.59, 77% female) diagnosed with BPD.Main Outcomes and Measures: Presence or absence of a suicide attempt within one year of each follow-up assessment. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to 1) examine longitudinal, within-person transitions from interpersonal dysfunction to suicidal ideation to suicide attempts (i.e., the [I]nterpersonal-[I]deation-[A]ttempt pathway); and 2) evaluate whether two maladaptive personality dimensions, negative affect and disinhibition, moderated these transitions.Results: At the within-person level, there was support for the I-I-A pathway: suicidal ideation accounted for the association between interpersonal dysfunction and suicide attempts. Personality further moderated each component of the I-I-A pathway: negative affect was associated with a stronger coupling between interpersonal dysfunction and ideation; and disinhibition was associated with a stronger coupling between ideation and attempts. Conclusions and Relevance: The escalation from interpersonal difficulties to a suicidal crisis in BPD involves two psychologically distinct process. An internalizing process links interpersonal dysfunction to suicidal ideation and is facilitated by trait negative. An additional externalizing process links suicidal ideation to suicide attempts, and is facilitated by trait disinhibition. Assessment of these intra- and interindividual risk factors may inform clinical decisions about when, and for whom, crisis intervention is necessary.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 53-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.I. Aaltonen ◽  
T. Rosenström ◽  
I. Baryshnikov ◽  
B. Karpov ◽  
T. Melartin ◽  
...  

AbstractBackground:Substantial evidence supports an association between childhood maltreatment and suicidal behaviour. However, few studies have examined factors mediating this relationship among patients with unipolar or bipolar mood disorders.Methods:Depressive disorder and bipolar disorder (ICD-10-DCR) patients (n = 287) from the Helsinki University Psychiatric Consortium (HUPC) Study were surveyed on self-reported childhood experiences, current depressive symptoms, borderline personality disorder traits, and lifetime suicidal behaviour. Psychiatric records served to complement the information on suicide attempts. We examined by formal mediation analyses whether (1) the effect of childhood maltreatment on suicidal behaviour is mediated through borderline personality disorder traits and (2) the mediation effect differs between lifetime suicidal ideation and lifetime suicide attempts.Results:The impact of childhood maltreatment in multivariate models on either lifetime suicidal ideation or lifetime suicide attempts showed comparable total effects. In formal mediation analyses, borderline personality disorder traits mediated all of the total effect of childhood maltreatment on lifetime suicide attempts, but only one fifth of the total effect on lifetime suicidal ideation. The mediation effect was stronger for lifetime suicide attempts than for lifetime suicidal ideation (P = 0.002) and independent of current depressive symptoms.Conclusions:The mechanisms of the effect of childhood maltreatment on suicidal ideation versus suicide attempts may diverge among psychiatric patients with mood disorders. Borderline personality disorder traits may contribute to these mechanisms, although the influence appears considerably stronger for suicide attempts than for suicidal ideation.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kaurin ◽  
Alexandre Y. Dombrovski ◽  
Michael N. Hallquist ◽  
Aidan G. C. Wright

Abstract Background Suicide rates are high in borderline personality disorder (BPD) where interpersonal problems trigger intense affective dysregulation and impulses to act on suicidal thoughts. To date, however, no study has examined how interpersonal stressors contribute to momentary within-person links among affect and impulsivity with suicidal ideation (SI), and how those links vary over time in people's daily lives. Methods A total of 153 individuals diagnosed with BPD and 52 healthy controls completed a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol. Of these 153 individuals with BPD, 105 had a history of suicide attempts. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to examine dynamic links among interpersonal perceptions, affect, state impulsivity, and suicidal intent. Results Aggregated across interactions, lower perceived warmth in others was associated with SI. This direct relationship, however, did not extend to momentary within-person associations. Instead, interpersonal conflicts were linked to SI indirectly via greater negative affect and lower positive affect. While a robust within-person link between interpersonal perceptions and impulsivity emerged, impulsivity did not account for the relationship between interpersonal perceptions and SI. Conclusion This intensive longitudinal study illustrates momentary interpersonal signatures of an emerging suicidal crisis. Among people with BPD at high risk for suicide, interpersonal triggers initiate a cascade of affective dysregulation, which in turn gives rise to SI.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kaurin ◽  
Alexandre Dombrovski ◽  
Michael Hallquist ◽  
Aidan G.C. Wright

Suicidality is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD), yet little work has accounted for why only a small subset of those that have thoughts of suicide, commit suicide. In this study we compared early stage suicidal crises, where affective disturbance is linked to suicidal ideation at the within-person level (i.e., suicidal surges) across suicide attempters and non-attempters. We used multilevel structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis that a history of attempted suicide predicts a stronger dynamic link of daily affect and impulsivity with suicidal ideation. 141 patients diagnosed with BPD, 97 of which had a history of medically serious suicide attempts, and 52 healthy controls completed a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol (N=3790 days). All models suggested that people generally experiencing more negative and less positive affect and high in impulsivity, also tend to ideate more about suicide on average. Moreover, within-person associations of negative and positive affect with suicidal ideation (i.e., suicidal surges) were greater among attempters in comparison to non-attempters, and healthy controls. This suggests that the diathesis for suicidal behavior is expressed in the dynamic processes linking affect and suicidal ideation. Because these within-person links were amplified in attempters compared to non-attempters, suicidal surges may index specific, potentially lethal, processes that generalize beyond BPD and may have clinical value as predictors of suicidal risk.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kaurin ◽  
Aidan G.C. Wright ◽  
Michael Hallquist ◽  
Alexandre Dombrovski

Background: Suicide rates are high in borderline personality disorder (BPD) where interpersonal problems trigger intense affective dysregulation and impulses to act on suicidal thoughts. To date, however, no study has examined how interpersonal stressors contribute to momentary within-person links among affect and impulsivity with suicidal ideation, and how those links vary over time in people’s daily lives. Methods: 153 individuals diagnosed with BPD and 52 healthy controls completed a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol. Of these 153 BPD individuals with BPD, 105 had a history of suicide attempts. Multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) was used to examine dynamic links among interpersonal perceptions, affect, state impulsivity, and suicidal intent. Results: Aggregated across interactions, lower perceived warmth in others was associated with suicidal ideation. This direct relationship, however, did not extend to momentary within-person associations. Instead, interpersonal conflicts were linked to suicidal ideation indirectly via greater negative affect and lower positive affect. While a robust within-person link between interpersonal perceptions and impulsivity emerged, impulsivity did not account for the relationship between interpersonal perceptions and suicidal ideation. Conclusion: This intensive longitudinal study illustrates momentary interpersonal signatures of an emerging suicidal crisis. Among people with BPD at high risk for suicide, interpersonal triggers initiate a cascade of affective dysregulation, which in turn gives rise to suicidal ideation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 546-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Schultebraucks ◽  
Moritz Duesenberg ◽  
Martina Di Simplicio ◽  
Emily A. Holmes ◽  
Stefan Roepke

A better understanding of suicidal behavior is important to detect suicidality in at-risk populations such as patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and major depressive disorder (MDD). Suicidal tendencies are clinically assessed by verbal thoughts rather than by specifically asking about mental images. This study examines whether imagery and verbal thoughts about suicide occur and differ between patients with BPD with and without comorbid PTSD compared to patients with MDD (clinical controls). All patient groups experienced suicide-related images. Patients with BPD with comorbid PTSD reported significantly more vivid images than patients with MDD. Severity of suicidal ideation, number of previous suicide attempts, and childhood traumata were significantly associated with suicidal imagery across all patient groups. The authors demonstrate for the first time that suicide-related mental imagery occurs in BPD and is associated with suicidal ideation. This finding highlights the importance of assessing mental imagery related to suicide in clinical practice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip S. Santangelo ◽  
Jana Holtmann ◽  
Georg Hosoya ◽  
Martin Bohus ◽  
Tobias D. Kockler ◽  
...  

Dysfunctional behaviors are conceptualized as maladaptive affective coping attempts in borderline personality disorder (BPD). The recent benefits-and-barriers model extended the affective function assumption by adding self-esteem as a barrier to engaging in dysfunctional behaviors. Patients with BPD ( N = 119) carried e-diaries to report their current self-esteem, emotional valence, tense arousal, and whether they engaged in dysfunctional behaviors 12 times a day for 4 days. Dynamic structural equation modeling revealed that on the within-person level, high momentary negative affect predicted dysfunctional behaviors, and on the between-person level, low trait self-esteem predicted dysfunctional behaviors. We also found an association between engaging in dysfunctional behaviors and momentary self-esteem and trait levels of valence and tense arousal. Moreover, our results indicate a deterioration of, rather than relief from, negative affective state after dysfunctional behaviors. These findings highlight the importance of emotion-regulation skills and reestablishing a positive self-view as important treatment targets to reduce dysfunctional behaviors in BPD.


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