Developmental Trajectories to Male Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

Due to the higher diagnostic prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in females, there exists a dearth of literature on the manifestations of BPD in men and minimal information on male developmental trajectories to the disorder. To identify precursors of BPD in males, surveys were administered to parents about their BPD male offspring and non-BPD male siblings. Questions covered aspects of probands' lives from infancy to late adolescence. BPD offspring were identified through self-reported clinical diagnoses and standardized diagnostic criteria embedded within the survey. A total of 263 male offspring (97 meeting strict criteria for BPD and 166 non-BPD siblings) were studied. The authors found that parents describe the early emergence of a constellation of symptoms in their BPD sons that include separation anxiety starting in infancy, body image concerns in childhood, and impulsivity, emptiness, and odd thinking in adolescence. This trajectory differs from the developmental course found in females diagnosed with BPD.

Parent-child relationship associated with the development of borderline personality disorder: A systematic review

“…A recent study by Laporte and colleagues also underlined the important role of temperamental traits in the development of BPD, those traits being the main difference between BPD probands and their sisters free of psychopathology, who both reported similar relationships with their parents. Likewise, studies focusing on the perspective of parents of BPD probands reported that both a child's difficult temperament (i.e., unusual sensitivity, moodiness) and a conflictual PCR were significant predictors of BPD diagnosis .…”

“…Moreover, two studies measured parental perspective on BPD child's behaviour compared to their non‐BPD siblings. The 2010 study asked parents to compare their BPD daughter to their other non‐BPD daughters, while the 2013 study compared BPD sons to their non‐BPD brothers.…”

Epistemic Petrification and the Restoration of Epistemic Trust: A New Conceptualization of Borderline Personality Disorder and Its Psychosocial Treatment

“…To this end, recent personality disorder research has focused on developmental issues with relevance for multiple personality disorder constructs, including reward processing (White et al, 2014), stress responses , emotion regulation (Gratz et al, 2014) and social cognition (Sharp & Vanwoerden, 2014). Over recent years there has been increasing interest in the emergence of borderline personality disorder (Arens et al, 2013;Bornovalova, Hicks, Iacono, & McGue, 2013;Chanen & McCutcheon, 2013;Stepp, Olino, Klein, Seeley, & Lewinsohn, 2013) and evidence to suggest that the disorder may have roots in early development is accumulating (Goodman, Patel, Oakes, Matho, & Triebwasser, 2013;Lopez-Castroman et al, 2013;Perroud et al, 2013;Siever, 2008). In this paper, building on earlier work on the significance of attachment and mentalization for the development of BPD (see Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman, 2008;Fonagy & Luyten, 2009;Fonagy & Luyten, in press;Fonagy, Luyten, & Strathearn, 2011), we propose a developmental framework that conceptualizes BPD in terms of a specific underlying vulnerability to psychopathology (Fonagy, Luyten, & Allison, 2014).…”

A prospective, longitudinal, study of men with borderline personality disorder with and without comorbid antisocial personality disorder

“…Life-time prevalence of BPD is estimated between 0.7% and 2.3% in males [ 1 , 2 ]. While studies of community samples generally report no sex differences in the prevalence of BPD [ 3 – 5 ], fewer males than females seek treatment for BPD [ 6 – 8 ]. Consequently, little is known about men with BPD.…”