Emotion regulation, mindfulness, and self-compassion among patients with borderline personality disorder, compared to healthy control subjects.

<h4>Objectives</h4>Emotion regulation difficulties are a major characteristic of personality disorders. Our study investigated emotion regulation difficulties that are characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD), compared to a healthy control group.<h4>Methods</h4>...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ella Salgó, Liliána Szeghalmi, Bettina Bajzát, Eszter Berán, Zsolt Unoka
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248409&type=printable
Description
Summary:<h4>Objectives</h4>Emotion regulation difficulties are a major characteristic of personality disorders. Our study investigated emotion regulation difficulties that are characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD), compared to a healthy control group.<h4>Methods</h4>Patients with BPD (N = 59) and healthy participants (N = 70) filled out four self-report questionnaires (Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Self-Compassion Scale) that measured the presence or lack of different emotion-regulation strategies. Differences between the BPD and the healthy control group were investigated by Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and univariate post-hoc F-test statistics.<h4>Results</h4>People suffering from BPD had statistically significantly (p<0.05) higher levels of emotional dysregulation and used more maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies, as well as lower levels of mindfulness and self-compassion compared to the HC group.<h4>Conclusion</h4>In comparison to a healthy control group, BPD patients show deficits in the following areas: mindfulness, self-compassion and adaptive emotion-regulation strategies. Based on these results, we suggest that teaching emotion-regulation, mindfulness, and self-compassion skills to patients can be crucial in the treatment of borderline personality disorder.
ISSN:1932-6203