Borderline Personality Disorder Flashcards
What percentage of borderline patients experienced childhood trauma and which researcher said it?
Lieb et al (2004) said that between 70-80% experienced childhood trauma.
What is the nemonic for the research on borderline PD?
Distant Relatives Love Saying Everyone Has Sprouted During Recent Seasons
Who said that the heritability of borderline PD was 42%
Distel et al (2008)
What did Reichborn-Kjenneurd et al (2004) say?
Borderline heritability was 69% from twin studies.
What did Lieb et al say and when?
70-80% of borderline patients have experienced childhood trauma (approx). He said this in 2004
What did Schmahl &Bremmer et al (2006) do/say?
They investigated the brain areas involved in borderline personality disorder.
They found that hippocampus volume was reduced as was the metabolic rate of the left hippocampus.
They also found that the grey matter volume of the amygdala was reduced, especially the left amygdala (which is associated with positive emotions).
They also found that the grey matter volume in PFC areas was reduced.
These results point to emotion regulation problems, supporting the idea that borderline PD centred around an inability to regulate emotions in a stable way.
Who said that borderline patients experienced more negative emotions than positive ones and that they experienced the negative emotions with more intensity than they experienced the positive ones.
What was the result of these uneven emotions?
Ebner et al (2004), with 50 borderline and 50 controls.
Inability to regulate emotions effectively lead to a global undifferentiated negative affective state.
This inhibited coping strategies and directed people to escape behaviours e.g impulsivity.
What did Herpertz et al (2001) do/say?
They investigated the neural correlates of emotion regulation in borderline patients.
6 borderline women and 6 control women were presented with 12 emotionally distressing images and 12 neutral images while an fMRI was taken.
They found that activation in the fusiform gyrus and the amygdala were higher in borderline patients for distressing stimuli than in controls.
Found activation in both left and right amygdala.
What did Schultze et al (2011) do/find?
They investigated the neural correlations of emotional regulation in borderline PD using an fMRI.
Got 15 borderline and 15 controls and showed them negative and neutral stimuli.
Asked them to do 1 of 3 things, either;
- ) Increase emotional response: imagine its you or family in the distressing situation.
- ) Decrease the emotional response: take the view of a detached observer.
- ) Maintain response: Just directly report feelings, do not try and regulate in any way.
They found an increase in left and right amygdala activation during negative stimuli in borderline patients and a decrease in the activation of the PFC.
Suggested this underlies the inability for borderline patients to regulate emotion.
Who measured the metabolic rate of brain areas using PET and what did they find?
Dell’ Osso et al (2010) used PET to measure the metabolisation of glucose in key brain areas of borderline patients.
They found that there was decreased metabolic rates in the DLPFC and the limbic system of borderline patients.
Suggested that this was due to the inability of pre-frontal areas to regulate the limbic responses.
What did Rinne et al (2012) study?
They investigated the relationship between HPA axis activation and childhood trauma in borderline patients.
They recruited 39 borderline patients with or without childhood trauma and assessed their corticoid releasing hormone drive and their glucocorticoid feedback.
They found that borderline patients who had suffered trauma had a significantly higher cortisol secretion than those who had not.
Sustained ACTH in borderline PD means sustained stress which can damage the brain.
What did Stoffers et al (2012) say?
They said that there was little difference in the therapeutic treatments of borderline personality disorder.
None have shown robust or consistent evidence.
What therapies are available to treat borderline personality disorder.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy
Transference Focuses Psychotherapy
Mentalization Psychotherapy
Walk through how they think borderline personality disorder occurs.
Start with a genetic predisposition (very heritable) -> This combines with environmental triggers (such as childhood trauma) to impair the ability to regulate emotions and cause impulsivity. -> This impulsivity and dysregulation causes aversive symptoms and behaviours -> These feed back into and reinforce the inability to regulate emotions which generates more aversive behaviours.
Key Areas for borderline PD (topics within it)
Genetics, Trauma, Emotion dysregulation, treatment.
