Positive Affect Is Associated With Decreased Symptom Severity in the Daily Lives of Individuals With Borderline Personality Disorder

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tine S. D. Harp⊘th ◽  
Johanna Hepp ◽  
Timothy J. Trull ◽  
Anthony W. Bateman ◽  
Mickey T. Kongerslev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Positive Affect ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Symptom Burden ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Paranoid Ideation ◽  
The Individual

Previous research has repeatedly demonstrated positive associations between negative affect (NA) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms in daily life, but studies have rarely addressed potential effects of positive affect (PA). Consequently, little is known about how PA in daily life covaries with symptoms of BPD. The authors assessed the effects of both PA and NA levels on BPD symptom severity in a sample of 81 treatment-seeking women diagnosed with BPD over a period of 21 days, employing a daily diary design. Using multivariate multilevel modeling, the authors obtained negative associations between PA levels and daily BPD severity in total and at the level of the individual symptoms inappropriate anger, affective instability, emptiness, identity disturbance, and paranoid ideation/dissociation. Moreover, the authors replicated previously reported positive associations between NA and BPD severity for all nine symptoms. Future research can address whether increasing PA in the treatment of BPD may potentially help reduce symptom burden.

scholarly journals Altered interoception in patients with borderline personality disorder: a study using heartbeat-evoked potentials

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Flasbeck ◽  
Stoyan Popkirov ◽  
Andreas Ebert ◽  
Martin Brüne
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Evoked Potentials ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Emotional Awareness ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Interoceptive Awareness ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Healthy Controls

Abstract Background Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience difficulties in emotional awareness (alexithymia), and often develop dissociative symptoms, which may reflect broader deficits in interoceptive awareness. Whether this is associated with alterations in cortical processing of interoception is currently unknown. Methods We utilized an electrophysiological marker of interoception, i.e. heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP), and examined its relationship with electrocardiographic correlates of autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning (heart rate variability), and with self-report measures of alexithymia, dissociation and borderline symptom severity in patients with BPD. Results Individuals with BPD had higher HEP amplitudes over frontal electrodes compared to healthy controls. Sympathetic ANS activity was greater in BPD patients than in controls. Across groups, HEP amplitudes were associated with parasympathetic activity over central electrodes and correlated with alexithymia over frontal electrodes. Conclusions These findings support the idea that difficulties in emotional awareness in BPD are reflected in altered frontal electrophysiological markers of interception. Therefore, emotional awareness can be understood as failures of modulation between interoceptive and exteroceptive attention. Future research may aim to investigate whether altered interoception and its electrophysiological correlates are malleable by therapeutic intervention.

Symptom severity and treatment course of bulimic patients with and without a borderline personality disorder

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 430-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Zeeck ◽  
E. Birindelli ◽  
A. Sandholz ◽  
A. Joos ◽  
T. Herzog ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Borderline Personality

Failures to Imagine

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reed Maxwell ◽  
Steven Jay Lynn ◽  
Scott Lilienfeld
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Mental Imagery ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Visual Mental Imagery

Although interest in the relationship between mental imagery and psychopathology has increased greatly over the last decade, few publications to date have examined relationships between personality-related psychopathology and mental imagery use, abilities, or both. However, we have reason to expect that substantive relationships may exist. For example, studies have consistently linked psychopathy and borderline personality disorder to problems in emotion experience and emotion regulation, and a growing number of studies indicate that deficits in visual mental imagery use and ability in particular may contribute to such problems. Using correlational data from multiple self-report measures of normal and pathological personality functioning and visual mental imagery, our study presents preliminary evidence for lower levels of self-reported visual mental imagery use, abilities, or both among noncriminal individuals with higher levels of self-reported psychopathy and individuals with greater emotional regulation difficulties, a core feature of borderline personality disorder. We also found significant relationships among self-reported visual mental imagery use, ability, or both, and personality variables shown to strongly predict psychopathy and emotional regulation difficulties. Limitations of the study, especially its reliance on a correlational, cross-sectional design, are discussed, and implications for future research are explored.

Self-Compassion Mediates the Relationship Between Mindfulness and Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 838-856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah J. Scheibner ◽  
Anna Daniels ◽  
Simon Guendelman ◽  
Franca Utz ◽  
Felix Bermpohl
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Psychological Process ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Nonclinical Sample ◽  
The Relationship

Individuals suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience difficulties with mindfulness. How mindfulness influences BPD symptoms, however, is still unknown. We hypothesized that the relationship between mindfulness and BPD symptoms would be mediated by self-compassion. In study 1, we recruited 29 individuals with BPD and 30 group-matched healthy controls. In study 2, we complemented our results with findings from a larger, nonclinical sample of 89 participants that were recruited during an open-house event at the local university. All participants completed questionnaires assessing self-compassion, mindfulness, BPD symptom severity, and emotion dysregulation. In both studies, self-compassion mediated the relationship between mindfulness and BPD symptom severity as well as between mindfulness and emotion dysregulation. Self-compassion seems to be one psychological process that could explain the relationship between mindfulness and BPD symptoms. One promising approach in therapy could be to target self-compassion more directly during mindfulness trainings and interventions.

scholarly journals Borderline personality disorder classification based on brain network measures during emotion regulation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Cremers ◽  
Linda van Zutphen ◽  
Sascha Duken ◽  
Gregor Domes ◽  
Andreas Sprenger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Brain Network ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Classification Analysis ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Network Measures

AbstractBorderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by an increased emotional sensitivity and dysfunctional capacity to regulate emotions. While amygdala and prefrontal cortex interactions are regarded as the critical neural mechanisms underlying these problems, the empirical evidence hereof is inconsistent. In the current study, we aimed to systematically test different properties of brain connectivity and evaluate the predictive power to detect borderline personality disorder. Patients with borderline personality disorder (n = 51), cluster C personality disorder (n = 26) and non-patient controls (n = 44), performed an fMRI emotion regulation task. Brain network analyses focused on two properties of task-related connectivity: phasic refers to task-event dependent changes in connectivity, while tonic was defined as task-stable background connectivity. Three different network measures were estimated (strength, local efficiency, and participation coefficient) and entered as separate models in a nested cross-validated linear support vector machine classification analysis. Borderline personality disorder vs. non-patient controls classification showed a balanced accuracy of 55%, which was not significant under a permutation null-model, p = 0.23. Exploratory analyses did indicate that the tonic strength model was the highest performing model (balanced accuracy 62%), and the amygdala was one of the most important features. Despite being one of the largest data-sets in the field of BPD fMRI research, the sample size may have been limited for this type of classification analysis. The results and analytic procedures do provide starting points for future research, focusing on network measures of tonic connectivity, and potentially focusing on subgroups of BPD.

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