[Educational practices in families with children suffering from borderline disorders and healthy volunteers in comparison].

Standardized assessment of education is not used routinely although these factors may play an important role in the course of psychological disorders in children. Thus the aim of the present study was to investigate families of Borderline children with regard to differences with regard to education in their families. Families of 115 Borderline children (aged 6-12y), diagnosed by means of the Mannheim's Parents Interview (Esser et al. 1989) were included for evaluation and compared with a matched control group. Parents were asked to complete a form assessing education ("Erziehungspraktiken", Schneewind et al. 1985). Group comparison was made by the Mann-Whitney-U-test. The results show that there are less emotional attention, less material reinforcers and more physical punishment in families whose children belong to the Borderline children" group. It could be shown, that there seems to be a significant influence of Borderline symptomatology on education which should make therapists focus their efforts not only on the "index" children as such but also on their families.