Temperament and character traits in female adolescents with nonsuicidal self-injury disorder with and without comorbid borderline personality disorder

Abstract

BackgroundTemperament and character traits of adolescents with nonsuicidal self-injury disorder (NSSI) might differentiate those- with and without comorbid borderline personality disorder (BPD).MethodsParticipants were 57 female adolescents with NSSI disorder without BPD (NSSI − BPD), 14 adolescents with NSSI disorder and BPD (NSSI + BPD), 32 clinical controls (CC), and 64 nonclinical controls (NC). Temperament and character traits were assessed with the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory, and impulsivity with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale and a Go/NoGo task.ResultsAdolescents with NSSI disorder scored significantly higher on novelty seeking and harm avoidance and lower on persistence, self-directedness, and cooperativeness than CC. The NSSI + BPD group scored even higher than the NSSI − BPD group on novelty seeking and harm avoidance and lower on persistence and cooperativeness (d ≥ 0.72). Adolescents with NSSI reported higher levels of impulsivity than the CC and NC group. However, this difference was not found in a Go/NoGo task.ConclusionsThe results provide further evidence for a distinct diagnostic entity of NSSI disorder.

Paranoia and risk of personality disorder in the general population

“…Thus, brain DRD2 receptor density has been negatively correlated to personality traits as novelty seeking, impulsivity or harm avoidance 21 and parallelly the dopamine metabolism, especially the DRD2 receptor has been implied in schizophrenia. 22 Novelty seeking is also a well-known common personality trait to both paranoia 20 and BPD 23 and is associated to genetic variability in dopamine receptors 24 that are also altered in paranoia and BPD. 25 This study sets out to explore, in a large and representative sample of the general population, the dimensionally measured association between paranoia and PD (both any PD and BPD).…”

Temperament and Character Traits of Female Eating Disorder Patients with(out) Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

“…Specifically, female adolescents who engaged in self-injury and experienced STBs showed higher CO scores compared to those without STBs [43]. So far, no associations have been found between reward dependence and NSSI [34,36].…”

“…Several studies used Cloninger's model to trace temperament and character dimensions in psychopathology. For instance, adolescents engaging in NSSI, both patients and non-clinical controls, are characterised by high novelty seeking and low persistence [20,[34][35][36]. High NS and low PS both indicate high impulsivity, which could partially explain why those who engage in NSSI struggle with resisting the urge to self-injure [37].…”

“…The lack of adaptive emotion regulation strategies might push individuals with low SD towards NSSI once they are confronted with an overwhelming negative affect [42]. Contributing to these emotion regulation difficulties are the high harm avoidance levels in the personality profile of NSSI [34]. According to Cloninger, the combination of high NS and high HA results in an approach-avoidance conflict that can cause further affective instability [29].…”

“…Furthermore, we hypothesise a combination of high novelty seeking and low persistence in patients with a bingeing/purging ED and the opposite combination, low novelty seeking and high persistence, in patients with a restrictive ED [44][45][46][47]. If patients are engaging in NSSI, we hypothesise those individuals to be characterised by high novelty seeking, low persistence, low self-directedness, and high harm avoidance [20,[34][35][36]].…”