Childhood maltreatment, personality vulnerability profiles, and borderline personality disorder symptoms in adolescents (original) (raw)
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Adolescent Psychiatry
Background: Childhood maltreatment represents a major and preventable risk factor for psychiatric difficulties. However, the majority of studies treat maltreatment experiences as if they occur alone, but evidence suggests co-occurrence of maltreatment is the norm rather than the exception. Little is known regarding consequences of particular types and combinations of childhood maltreatment in adolescence. Objective: To identify classes of maltreatment types and combinations using a personcentered approach (Latent Class Analysis) and then to examine whether adolescents who experienced specific types and combinations of maltreatment reported more borderline personality traits, self-injury or internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Methods: Participants included 327 adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 21 recruited from schools, colleges and a university and who completed a series of online questionnaires. Results: Four subgroups of maltreatment were identified including sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect co-occurring with physical and sexual abuse, as well as parental antipathy cooccurring with neglect and physical abuse. With regard to personality disorder traits, adolescents who experienced sexual abuse endorsed significantly more difficulties, as did adolescents who experienced antipathy. With regard to self-injury, adolescents who experienced sexual abuse, as well as those who experienced neglect were at higher risk. With regard to internalizing and externalizing difficulties, adolescents who experienced sexual abuse reported more internalizing difficulties, whereas those who experienced antipathy and neglect reported more internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Conclusion: Awareness of specific types and co-occurring maltreatment as risk factors for personality difficulties and self-injury has implications for improving trauma informed treatment.
Adolescent Psychiatry
Background: Childhood maltreatment is theorized to undermine the development of mentalizing and to disrupt the consolidation of healthy narcissism and the integration of personality at the level of affect and interpersonal regulation. Consistent with this, mentalizing can be expected to mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and vulnerable and grandiose narcissism as well as borderline personality traits, but this has not been examined in adolescents. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine associations between childhood maltreatment and adolescent personality disorder traits and test the mediating role of mentalizing in a sample of 263 adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 21. Methods: Participants recruited from schools and a tertiary institution completed the Childhood Experiences of Care and Abuse Questionnaire (CECA-Q), the Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children (BPFS-C), the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) and the Reflective Function Questionnaire for Youth (RFQ-Y). Results: Adolescents with histories of sexual and physical abuse reported significantly more borderline personality features, as well as vulnerable and grandiose narcissism. They also reported signficantly more mentalizing difficulties including confusion regarding mental states and excessive certainty regarding mental states of others. Confusion regarding mental states partially mediated the relation between emotional abuse and borderline personality traits, as well as vulnerable and grandiose narcissism. Excessive certainty regarding the mental states of others mediated the relationship between childhood experiences of role reversal and grandiose narcissism. Conclusion: The findings are consistent with a mentalization model of adolescent personality difficulties and show that the relation between childhood maltreatment and personality disorder traits in adolescents may be in part understood in terms of the impact of such experiences on different dimensions of mentalizing.
Childhood adversity and borderline personality disorder
Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 2014
Purpose of review This article explores recent research in the field of childhood exposure to trauma and the development of borderline personality disorder in adolescence. Recent findings Adolescence is a critical period of development. Exposure to trauma, specifically sexual abuse, prior to and during puberty has specific implications for personality development and heightens risk for borderline personality disorder. Elevated symptom levels in adolescence are likely to decline across adulthood, but social and vocational impairments remain. Impulsivity, difficulties in emotion regulation, and suicidality may characterize adolescent expression of borderline personality disorder, whereas negative affect and functional impairment are more stable features of the disorder. Summary Preliminary findings in treatment models for adults have potential for benefit among adolescence. Further research is required to examine treatment effectiveness and efficiency. Greater attention to low-income and middle-income nations, which are disproportionately affected by adversity, is needed to determine crosscultural validity and the impact of trauma in adolescent populations.
Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry = Journal de l'Academie canadienne de psychiatrie de l'enfant et de l'adolescent
The present study utilized a prospective, longitudinal design to examine the role of temperament and maltreatment in predicting the emergence of borderline (BPD) and antisocial (ASPD) personality disorder symptoms during adolescence. Two hundred and forty-five children aged between 11 and 13 years were recruited from primary schools in Melbourne, Australia. Participants completed temperament, maltreatment, BPD and ASPD symptom measures, and approximately two years later, 206 participants were again assessed for BPD and ASPD symptoms. The findings indicate that childhood neglect is a significant predictor of an increase in BPD symptoms, while childhood abuse is a significant predictor of an increase in ASPD symptoms. Moreover, abuse and neglect acted as moderators of the relationship between temperament dimensions and increase in BPD and ASPD symptoms, respectively. Abuse was associated with an increase in BPD symptoms for children with low Affiliation, while neglect was associated w...
Journal of Clinical Medicine
Childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with increased non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicidal behavior (SB), independently of demographic and mental health conditions. Self-Trauma Theory and Linehan’s Biopsychosocial Model might explain the emergence of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) symptoms as mediators of the association between CM and the risk of SB. However, little is known regarding such relationships when the exposure is recent for young persons. Here, we study 187 youths aged 7–17, with or without mental disorders. We explore CM experiences (considering the severity and frequency of different forms of neglect and abuse), recent stressful life events (SLEs), some BPD traits (emotion dysregulation, intense anger and impulsivity), and the risk of SB (including NSSI, suicide threat, suicide ideation, suicide plan and suicide attempt). We study the direct and mediating relationships between these variables via a structural equation analysis using the statistical so...
Importance of Childhood Maltreatment on Borderline Personality in Adults: Meta-analysis
2021
Early childhood maltreatment (CM) is a risk factor for later psychopathology specifically Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). CM has been found to negatively affect social, emotional, and psychological development as well as the ability to foster and sustain interpersonal relationships throughout all stages of life. There are evidence-based interventions for different kinds of CM including Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT), Alternatives for Families - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (AF-CBT), relaxation training, and social skills training. The current study is a meta-analysis of published research into CM as it contributes to BPD in adults and is designed to examine the effect size of childhood maltreatment as it contributes to adults diagnosed with BPD. Glaser’s theory of emotional abuse and neglect and Linehan’s theory of etiology of impulsivity form the theoretical framework for understanding the definition and recognition of emotional abuse and neglect, and the...
Childhood antecedents of self-destructiveness in borderline personality disorder
Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie, 1997
To assess the relationship between lifetime patterns of self-destructive behaviour and various parameters of childhood abuse and neglect in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) compared with other personality disorder (OPD) controls. The subjects were 42 inpatients with the diagnosis of BPD and 17 OPD controls. Lifetime patterns of self-destructive behaviour were assessed using the Lifetime Borderline Symptom Index. Childhood experiences were assessed using a semistructured interview by raters who were blind to diagnosis. Chronic self-destructive behaviour discriminated patients with BPD from OPD controls. In the borderline group, parental sexual abuse was significantly related to suicidal behaviour and both parental sexual abuse and emotional neglect were significantly related to self-mutilation. Both parental sexual abuse and emotional neglect appear to play a role in the etiology of self-destructive behaviour in BPD. The results highlight the importance of consider...
Clinical child psychology and psychiatry, 2017
Borderline personality disorder has repeatedly been associated with a history of maltreatment in childhood; however, research on maltreatment and its link to borderline features in children is limited. The aim of this review is to synthesise the existing data on the association between maltreatment and borderline features in childhood. In total, 10 studies were included in this systematic review. Studies indicated that children with borderline features were more likely to have a history of maltreatment, and that children who had been maltreated were more likely to present with borderline features. Other risk factors such as cognitive and executive functioning deficits, parental dysfunction and genetic vulnerability were also identified across studies. This review adds to the literature by highlighting maltreatment as a risk factor for borderline features in childhood. Longitudinal research is required to establish the link between childhood borderline features and adult borderline f...
Assessment, 2010
Linehan's biosocial theory suggests that borderline personality disorder (BPD) results from a transaction of two childhood precursors: emotional vulnerability and an invalidating environment. Until recently, few empirical studies have explored relationships between these theoretical precursors and symptoms of the disorder. Psychometrically sound assessment tools are essential to this area of research. The present study examined psychometric characteristics of recently developed selfreport measures of childhood emotional vulnerability and parental invalidation. A large sample of undergraduates completed these measures; parent reports were collected to examine agreement between young adults' and parents' recollections of their emotional style in childhood and the parenting they received. Both measures were internally consistent, showed clear factor structures, and were significantly correlated with BPD features and related constructs. In addition, both showed modest, yet significant agreement between participants' and parents' reports. Overall, this study supports the utility of these measures of childhood emotional vulnerability and environmental invalidation.