A Comparison of Life Events in Adolescents with Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder and Matched Controls: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Background: The study assessed the prevalence of life events (LE) in adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD, n = 19), borderline personality disorder (BPD, n = 20) and matched controls (n = 20). Methods: Assessment measures included: the Child Suicide Potential Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Life Events Checklist, the Childhood Sexual Abuse Questionnaire and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Results: The percentage of negative lifetime LE was significantly higher in both MDD and BPD groups than in the control group, while the opposite was true for the percentage of positive LE. No difference was detected between the groups in the number of negative LE in the year preceding their admission. The MDD group reported more death-related LE than the control group, while the BPD group reported more sexual abuse LE than the control and MDD groups. Conclusions: The present study is a cross-sectional study, and therefore, we cannot draw definite conclusions regarding causality. Yet, the significance of negative LE as contributors to and of positive LE as protective factors against the development of nonsuicidal psychopathology is suggested. Further, the possible association between death of a first-degree relative and MDD and between sexual abuse occurring in early childhood and BPD is raised.

The Specific Role of Childhood Abuse, Parental Bonding, and Family Functioning in Female Adolescents With Borderline Personality Disorder

“…Another type of abuse strongly present in the BPD group was a history of sexual abuse, in line with the few previous studies on clinical adolescent BPD (Horesh, Ratner, Laor, & Toren, 2008;Venta et al, 2012). Our finding that sexual abuse predicted BPD in adolescent patients within multivariate analysis was rather surprising, given that Fossati and colleagues (1999) reported a meta-analytically derived, modest overall effect size (r = 0.28) of childhood sexual abuse in adult BPD.…”

A preliminary study of the relation between trauma symptoms and emerging BPD in adolescent inpatients

“…Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this study addresses a currently underdeveloped area in personality disorder research. Specifically, this is only the third study to explore the role of sexual trauma in adolescent BPD, and it is the first to identify sexual trauma as a feature that distinguishes between BPD and general psychiatric inpatients (not only a deBulletin of the Menninger Clinic pressed group as in Horesh et al, 2003Horesh et al, , 2008. Thus the present study builds upon the very limited research that currently addresses the role of sexual trauma in adolescent BPD and draws attention to the importance of childhood sexual abuse as a serious health concern and area of future research.…”

“…In fact, thus far only two studies have explored the apparent link between BPD and trauma in adolescents. Namely, Horesh and colleagues (Horesh, Ratner, Laor, & Toren, 2008;Horesh, Sever, & Apter, 2003) demonstrated that childhood sexual abuse successfully discriminated between patients with BPD and depressed controls using both suicidal and nonsuicidal samples. Still, the number of studies exploring BPD in youth is extremely limited.…”

Associations Between Attempted Suicide, Violent Life Events, Depressive Symptoms, and Resilience in Adolescents and Young Adults

“…Depressed adolescents report significantly more negative life events than nondepressed adolescents (Horesh et al, 2008). Various life stressors have emerged as antecedents of suicidal deaths among adolescents and young adults, with domestic conflict as the most frequent life stressor (Shields et al, 2006).…”