Interpersonal Problems in Parents and Adolescent Borderline Personality Disorder Features

Kerr, Sophie; Penner, Francesca; Sharp, Carla

doi:10.1521/pedi_2021_35_518

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Additionally, unlike the secure vs. insecure classification, previous research has failed to find associations between the CAI disorganized attachment classification and self-report measures of attachment in adolescents [66], raising questions about this dichotomous rating scale during adolescence. These findings align with previous IPC research showing associations between interpersonal problems and maladaptive attachment in adult close relationships [22] and add to only one existing study on the intergenerational risk associated with parental interpersonal problems [28], which found that parental interpersonal problems were associated with adolescent BPD features. This is the first study to suggest a relationship between maternal interpersonal problems and offspring attachment.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Regarding clinical applications of these findings, we focus on a population for which interpersonal problems are highly relevant: parents with personality pathology. While we did not directly measure parental personality pathology, there is theoretical and empirical support suggesting that interpersonal problems on the IPC aligns with severity of personality dysfunction as defined by the alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD; [28,75]). Our results provide important new contributions to the literature on parents with personality disorders, which has focused primarily on borderline personality disorder (BPD) and has found that maternal BPD is associated with disrupted attachment in offspring [23,24,35,36].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Maternal interpersonal problems and attachment security in adolescent offspring

Kerr

Penner

Ilagan

et al. 2022

bord personal disord emot dysregul

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Research on parent-level factors linked to adolescent attachment security would inform interventions to prevent or reduce youth psychopathology and other negative outcomes. The current study examined one relevant parent-level variable: maternal interpersonal problems. Interpersonal problems, a key characteristic of personality pathology, are well described by the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) and have been shown to be associated with maladaptive adult attachment in close/romantic relationships; however, studies have not examined relationships with offspring attachment. Therefore, the first aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between maternal interpersonal problems and adolescent attachment insecurity. Based on previous evidence that parents’ recalled bonding with caregivers is associated with the quality of bonding and attachment with offspring, the second aim was to examine whether mothers’ recalled bonding with their own mothers partially explained this relationship. Methods Participants included 351 psychiatric inpatient adolescents (Mage = 15.26, 64.1% female) and their biological mothers. Logistic regressions tested whether maternal interpersonal problems were associated with Child Attachment Interview classifications (secure vs. insecure; secure vs. preoccupied vs. dismissing; not disorganized vs. disorganized). A mediation model (N = 210) tested whether the relationship between maternal interpersonal problems and adolescent attachment was mediated by the mother’s recalled maternal bonding. Results Maternal interpersonal problems were associated with insecure (vs. secure), dismissing (vs. secure), and preoccupied (vs. secure) attachment. There was no significant relationship between maternal interpersonal problems and disorganized attachment. Mediation analyses showed that maternal interpersonal problems were indirectly related to adolescent attachment security via the mother’s recalled maternal care, though only a small amount of variance (7%) in adolescent offspring attachment was accounted for by the model. Conclusions Results provide the first evidence that maternal interpersonal problems are associated with higher likelihood of insecure attachment in adolescents. Therefore, researchers could consider drawing upon the IPC literature to further examine mechanisms of intergenerational risk and to tailor interventions aimed to improve parent-child relations and attachment. Additionally, findings highlight the mediating role of the mothers’ recalled experiences with caregivers in the transmission of risk, suggesting attachment-based or mentalization-based interventions may be helpful for mothers with interpersonal problems and personality pathology.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal interpersonal problems and attachment security in adolescent offspring

Kerr

Penner

Ilagan

et al. 2022

bord personal disord emot dysregul

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…BOR had correlations ≥.60 with several other PAI scales—including Aggression, Anxiety, Anxiety-Related Disorders, Depression, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, and Stress—in both samples. In addition, studies in our database reported that the PAI-BOR scale correlated .66 (Zalewski et al, 2020) and .69 (Dixon-Gordon & Laws, 2021) with depressive symptoms, and .60 with an indicator of internalizing psychopathology (Kerr et al, 2021).…”

Section: Comorbiditymentioning

confidence: 78%

Comorbidity and heterogeneity: Two challenges for personality pathology research.

Watson¹,

Clark²

2023

Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We critique the general state of methodological rigor in contemporary personality pathology research, focusing on challenges in study design, assessment, and data analysis resulting from two pervasive problems: comorbidity and heterogeneity. To inform our understanding of this literature, we examined every article published in the two main specialty journals for personality pathology research—Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment and the Journal of Personality Disorders—in the 18-month period from January 2020 to June 2021 (a total of 23 issues and 197 articles). Our review of this database indicated that only three forms of personality pathology have generated substantial attention in the recent literature: borderline personality disorder (featured in 93 articles), psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder (39 articles), and narcissism/narcissistic personality disorder (28 articles), so we highlight them in our review. We discuss comorbidity-related problems that arise from group-based designs and recommend instead that researchers assess multiple forms of psychopathology as continuous dimensions. We offer separate recommendations for addressing heterogeneity in diagnosis- versus trait-based studies. For the former, we recommend that researchers (a) use measures that permit criterion-level analyses and (b) routinely report criterion-level results. For the latter, we emphasize the importance of examining specific traits when measures are known to be highly heterogeneous/multidimensional. Finally, we encourage researchers to work toward a truly comprehensive trait dimensional model of personality pathology. We suggest that this might include expanding the current alternative model of personality disorders to include additional content related to borderline features, psychopathy, and narcissism.

show abstract

“…Increasing evidence suggests at this point that in the earliest stage broad vulnerabilities can be described at the trait level (Beauchaine et al, 2017) around which personality dysfunction with regard to self and interpersonal experiences further develops over time (Kerr et al, 2021;Vanwoerden et al, 2021), with fast developmental processes and increasing discriminative value of early traits toward maladaptive outcomes throughout adolescence (De Clercq et al, 2017). However, one issue that remains pertinent in the search for the most accurate assessment relates to the core feature of stability and change of personality pathology (Tackett et al, 2009), which is particularly the case for borderline-related traits.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing Between- and Within-Person Variability of Borderline Traits in Youth from a Developmentally Sensitive Situational Judgment Perspective

Franssens

Abrahams

Raemdonck

et al. 2022

Journal of Personality Assessment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The significance of early maladaptive traits for understanding the roots of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is increasingly endorsed. Given the interpersonal nature of BPD and fluctuations in phenotypic symptomatology, this study aims to test the assumption that a situation-contingent contextualized assessment of borderline traits is a viable avenue to more fully capture the way underlying traits are reflected in socioaffective behavior that occurs in age-relevant situations. We aimed to explore the extent to which the variability on these responses represents a meaningful construct for understanding the clinical richness of BPD. Toward this end, a contextualized measure of DSM-5 BPD traits was developed along a situational judgment test (SJT) format, allowing us to explore both between-person and within-person variability in a more economic format than repeated measurement does. Examination of the psychometric properties of the SJT revealed distinctive correlational patterns of the situation-based traits with symptom scales of a youth BPD measure, but also indicated that for certain traits consistency in trait level across different situations is more maladaptive, whereas for other traits a greater degree of variability in trait expression is more maladaptive. Overall, this work could set the stage for further research on the potential of SJTs for understanding personality vulnerabilities both at the dispositional and the dynamic level.

show abstract

Interpersonal Problems in Parents and Adolescent Borderline Personality Disorder Features

Cited by 5 publications

References 65 publications

Maternal interpersonal problems and attachment security in adolescent offspring

Maternal interpersonal problems and attachment security in adolescent offspring

Comorbidity and heterogeneity: Two challenges for personality pathology research.

Capturing Between- and Within-Person Variability of Borderline Traits in Youth from a Developmentally Sensitive Situational Judgment Perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About