These findings strongly support the claim that patients with bipolar disorder are at high risk for metabolic syndrome and related cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and require regular monitoring and adequate preventive efforts and treatment for cardio-metabolic risk factors. These findings further suggest that the risk of metabolic syndrome is greater in bipolar patients taking prescribed antipsychotic medication.

Using a daily process design, the present study examined relationships between momentary appraisals and emotional experience based on Smith and Lazarus' (1993) theory of emotions (1993). Nine times a day for 2 weeks, participants (N ϭ 33, 23 women) recorded their momentary experience of 2 positive emotions (joy, love) and 4 negative emotions (anger, guilt, fear, sadness) and the core relational theme appraisal contents Smith and Lazarus hypothesized as corresponding to these emotions. A series of multilevel modeling analyses found that the hypothesized relationships between appraisal contents and these emotions were stronger than relationships between contents and other emotions, although appraisals were related to other emotions in many cases. Moreover, there were some individual differences in the strength of these relationships. These results suggest that there are no one-to-one relationships between appraisal contents and specific emotional experiences, and that specific emotions are associated with different appraisal contents, and that specific appraisals are associated with different emotions.

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Although a number of effective psychotherapeutic treatments have been developed for borderline personality disorder (BPD), little is known about the mechanisms of change explaining the effects of these treatments. There is increasing evidence that impairments in mentalizing or reflective functioning-the capacity to reflect on the internal mental states of the self and others-are a central feature of BPD. To date, no study has directly investigated the core assumption of the mentalization-based approach to BPD, that changes in this capacity are associated with treatment outcome in BPD patients. This study is the first to directly investigate this assumption in a sample of 175 patients with BPD who received long-term hospitalizationbased psychodynamic treatment. Using a parallel process growth modeling approach, this study investigated whether (a) treatment was related to changes in mentalizing capacity as measured with the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire; (b) these changes could be explained by pretreatment levels of mentalizing and/or symptomatic distress; and (c) changes in mentalizing capacity over time were associated with symptomatic improvement. Mentalizing and symptomatic distress were assessed at admission, 12 and 24 weeks into treatment, and at discharge. Results showed that treatment was associated with significant decreases in mentalizing impairments (i.e., uncertainty about mental states) and symptomatic distress. Pretreatment levels of mentalizing and symptomatic distress did not predict these changes. However, improvements in mentalizing were strongly associated with the rate of decrease in symptomatic distress over time (r = .89). These findings suggest that increases in mentalizing may indeed in part explain therapeutic change in the treatment of BPD, but more research is needed to further substantiate these conclusions.

Studies using retrospective self-report or proxies of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in the lab have shown that NSSI is often preceded by intense negative emotions and followed by a decrease in negative emotions/tension, suggesting an emotion regulation function of NSSI. To investigate this emotion regulation function of NSSI in a more ecologically valid way, we used experience sampling methods to examine the temporal relationship between NSSI behavior and emotional experiences throughout the day in 30 inpatients currently staying in psychiatric hospitals. Because NSSI is especially prevalent and severe in patients with a borderline personality disorder (BPD), we focused on patients with high levels of BPD symptomatology. Results confirmed that high levels of negative emotion prospectively predicted a higher probability of engaging in NSSI in the next time interval. However, the occurrence of NSSI itself was related to concurrent increases in negative emotion and decreases in positive emotion, and even prospectively predicted an increase in negative emotion in the consecutive time interval. These preliminary results show that on a time scale of hours, instead of resulting in emotional relief, NSSI seems to be associated with a further increase in negative emotionality, shedding light on the cyclic nature of NSSI. (PsycINFO Database Record

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A model is proposed to represent individual differences in situation-behavior profiles. The model consists of 3 components: (a) q'ypologies of person, situation, and behavior classes; (b) hierarchical relations between the classes of each typology; and (c) a characterization of the person types in terms of different sets of if (situation class) then (behavior class) rules by which the 3 typologies are linked to one another. A data analysis technique (INDCLAS) is available to induce a triple typology model from empirical data. To reveal the psychological mechanisms behind such a model, the classes of the model can be related to situation, behavior, and person features. As a result, person types can be interpreted in terms of systems of cognitive-affective variables that mediate between active situation features and behavioral manifestations. This is illustrated with a study on selfreported hostile behavior in frustrating situations.According to Bem( 1983 ), the fundamental scientific task for personality research is to convert observations of particular persons behaving in particular ways in particular situations into assertions that certain kinds of persons will behave in certain kinds of ways in certain kinds of situations, that is, to construct triple typologies or equivalence classes--of persons, of behaviors, and of situations--and to fashion theories of personality that relate these equivalence classes to one another. (p. 566) Several authors other than Bern have underscored the importance of studying personality in terms of meaningful patterns of stability and change in well-defined groups of behaviors in relation to well-defined groups of situations (Allport, 1937;Claeys, Timmers, & Phalet, 1993;Golding, 1975;Mischel & Shoda, 1995;Olweus, 1976;Pervin, 1976;Shoda, Mischel, & Wright, 1993Wright & Mischel, 1987). In particular, Wright and Mischel, building on earlier work of Alston (1975), proposed a conditional approach to the study of personality, in which the fundamental unit of observation is not the unconditional probability of behavior but rather the conditional probability of a certain type of behavior given types of situations or psychological conditions. Within this context, differences between (classes of) persons may be conceived as differences in if (situation class) then (behavior class) rules. Wright and Mischel further assumed that the situation category as well as the behavior Kristof Vansteelandt and Iven Van Mechelen, Department of Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.The research reported in this article was supported by North Atlantic Treaty Organization Grant CRG921321. We thank Seymour Rosenberg for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kristof Vansteelandt, Department of Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Electronic mail may be sent to kristof.vansteelandt @psy.kuleuven.ac.be. category are prototype-based categories with vague boun...

Despite large efforts to understand emotional instability in borderline personality disorder (BPD), it is still unclear exactly how this is manifested in the daily lives of people suffering from the disorder. Building on theoretical and clinical observations of BPD, we propose that the emotional instability in BPD particularly consists of the occurrence of strong changes between positive and negative emotional states from 1 moment to the next, labeled emotional switching. We tested this proposal by means of an experience sampling study in which 30 BPD patients and 28 healthy controls reported in their daily lives the level of pleasantness/unpleasantness of their emotional states 10 times a day for 8 consecutive days using handheld palmtops. Results showed that although BPD patients did not differ from healthy controls regarding their overall tendency to switch from a positive to a negative emotional state or vice versa, the size of such changes between positive and negative states was found to be significantly larger in BPD patients. In contrast, the magnitude of emotional changes that remained within the negative emotional range or positive emotional range was not particularly larger for BPD patients compared with healthy participants. These findings imply that the emotional instability in BPD is particularly characterized by larger changes from positive to negative states and vice versa, rather than overall larger changes in intensity, providing insight into possible processes underlying emotion dysfunction in BPD.