Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical school, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
JARA Institute Brain Structure Function Relationship, Research Center Jülich and RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
PLoS One. 2019 Jan 10;14(1):e0209989. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209989. eCollection 2019.
A disturbed self-image is central to the characteristic symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Evaluations of self-relevance (SR) are highly important in cognitive and emotional processing of information and adaptive behavior.
In the current study, we used affective statements to investigate if SR is altered in patients with higher scores on Borderline Symptom List (BSL-95). Forthyfemale adults with BPD and 20 healthy participants assessed a set of stimuli consisting of sentences in third-person for relevance to self.
BPD patients exhibited a higher SR for negative contents as compared to healthy controls (p < .001). Furthermore, a significant positive correlation coefficient was found between the increased bias in evaluating the SR of stimuli and borderline symptom severity scores, as measured by BSL-95 questionnaire (r = 0.67, p < .001). This effect persisted after controlling for depressive symptoms by a partial correlation analysis.
Our results revealed an enhanced SR for negative statements, which was related to the severity of individuals' BPD symptoms. These findings add to the diagnostic information regarding the disturbed organization of self in this clinical population. We suggest the maladaptive evaluation of SR offers an important treatment target for therapeutic approaches to BPD.
自我形象紊乱是边缘型人格障碍（BPD）的核心特征症状。自我评价（SR）在信息认知和情绪处理以及适应性行为中非常重要。
在当前研究中，我们使用了情感陈述来调查 BSL-95 得分较高的 BPD 患者的 SR 是否发生改变。40 名 BPD 成年女性和 20 名健康参与者评估了一组由第三人称句子组成的刺激物，以评估其与自我的相关性。
与健康对照组相比，BPD 患者对负面内容的 SR 更高（p <.001）。此外，在控制 BSL-95 问卷的抑郁症状后，通过偏相关分析发现，评估刺激物的 SR 时，这种偏差与边缘型症状严重程度评分之间存在显著的正相关系数（r = 0.67，p <.001）。
我们的研究结果表明，BPD 患者对负面陈述的 SR 增强，这与个体 BPD 症状的严重程度有关。这些发现为该临床人群中自我紊乱的诊断信息提供了补充。我们认为，SR 的这种适应不良的评估为 BPD 的治疗方法提供了一个重要的治疗靶点。
