No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD), a complex disorder linked to adverse behavioral outcomes and impaired functioning, is associated with difficulties in emotion regulation (ER)—including both ER abilities and use of ER strategies. BPD commonly co-occurs with other disorders that are themselves linked to emotion dysregulation. Thus, it is important to consider the potential role of these comorbidities when examining ER difficulties in BPD. The present study investigated relationships between ER abilities, ER strategies, and BPD, while considering key comorbidities, among a sample of participants: (a) diagnosed with BPD, (b) without BPD but matched to BPD group members on key classes of psychopathology (i.e., mood, anxiety, substance use, trauma-related, and other personality disorders; matched psychiatric control [MPC] group), or (c) free of assessed psychopathology (healthy control [HC] group). Results revealed few significant differences between the BPD and MPC groups, who both demonstrated greater impairments than the HC group across most ER abilities and strategies. Notable exceptions were greater impulse control difficulty (ability) and anger rumination (strategy) in the BPD relative to both other groups. Additionally, lower composite maladaptive ER strategies and higher composite adaptive strategies distinguished the HC from BPD group, with neither composite ER abilities nor strategies differentiating the MPC from BPD group, though this result is limited by statistical overlap between variables. By elucidating the potential role of psychiatric comorbidity in two key components of ER in BPD, this study contributes to a growing literature that may help inform therapeutic interventions targeting the severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation commonly seen in this complex disorder. / Psychology

No description available.

No description available.

Recent discussion of proposed changes to the 5th version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders highlighted the struggle to categorize and define the characteristics of persons who present with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD has traditionally been defined as a personality disorder, assuming a distinct trajectory and prognosis that sets it apart from other mood disorder diagnoses. However, early discussion in the development of the DSM-V introduced the possibility of BPD as one of several disorders existing on a shared mood disorder or emotion-regulation disorder spectrum. The final, published DSM-V retained BPD as a personality disorder on a diagnostic spectrum apart from mood or emotion regulation disorders; however, does BPD represent a broader and persistent difficulty with emotion regulation, rather than a disorder of the personality? In the current study, 73 psychiatric inpatients in a state-operated forensic hospital and 428 undergraduate students from a local university were administered the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), as well as the BPD section of the Structured Interview for the Diagnosis of Personality Disorders, DSM-IV version (SIDP-IV). Total and subscale scores on the DERS were correlated with individual symptom ratings from the SIDP-IV Borderline. Results suggest many of the subscales representing different facets of emotion regulation evidenced low to moderate correlations with symptoms of BPD. The subscales of the DERS least associated with symptoms and diagnosis of BPD are those that emphasize cognitive regulation of emotional experiences. Thus, it is likely that BPD would fit well within a conceptualization of emotion regulation disorder. Results also suggest some differences between groups, where more overlap between constructs exist for college students rather than psychiatric inpatients, with the least associated constructs are those that emphasize both cognitive and behavioral components of emotional regulation.

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Olfactory identification deficits have received recent attention as a potentially useful endophenotype for schizophrenia. Examination of this deficit in individuals with schizotypal personality features (SPF) offers an alternative approach to multiple confounds present when examining individuals with schizophrenia. The aim of the current study was to compare the relative sensitivity of performance on measures of olfaction identification and sustained attention to the presence of SPF. Twenty-six undergraduates were defined as having SPF based on scoring in the top 10% of the Abbreviated Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-B; mean age 19.6, SD = 1.1; 62% female). These individuals were compared to twenty-six controls (scoring lower than half a standard deviation above the mean; mean age 19.8, SD = 1.6; 62% female). All participants were administered the Schizotypal Personality Disorder (SPD) section of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV Axis II Personality Disorders (SCID-II). In addition, participants were administered the Brief Smell Identification Test (B-SIT) and a six-minute degraded-stimuli Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Group differences in performance indices of the CPT did not approach statistical significance. Similarly, there were no statistically significant group differences for males or females in performance on the B-SIT. Correlational analyses examined cognitive performance with a dimension score derived by summing quantitative ratings from the SPD items on the SCID-II. The SPD dimension score showed a statistically significant positive correlation with several performance indices of the CPT, including omission errors (rs(52) = .51, p ≤ .001) and commission errors (rs(52) = .38, p ≤ .005). In contrast, the B-SIT scores were not correlated with the SPD dimension score for males or females. Contrary to our hypothesis, results from the current study suggest that olfactory identification deficits may not represent a robust endophenotype consistently found in samples with schizotypal personality features. With regard to sustained attention, our differential findings suggest that schizotypal traits may be more adequately assessed through an interview by trained clinicians who use clinical judgment to determine the presence of phenotypic aspects of SPD (e.g., SCID-II), rather than relying on self-report measures (e.g., SPQ-B). Implications as well as limitations and future directions of these findings are discussed.