Memory of childhood trauma before and after long-term psychological treatment of borderline personality disorder.

The present study investigated the consistency of self-reports of childhood traumatic events in a sample of 50 patients with a borderline personality disorder (BPD) before and after 27 months of intensive treatment with schema focused therapy or transference focused psychotherapy. The mean number of reported sexual, physical and emotional traumatic events did not change following treatment. Test-retest correlations of the trauma-interview also indicated high stability of the total number of sexual, physical and emotional events reported. The majority of the patients, however, did no longer report at least one of the 33 listed events after psychotherapy, and the majority reported at least one event that they had not mentioned before the start of treatment. These findings were not related to type of treatment or changes in suppression, intrusions, avoidance of intrusions, dissociative symptoms, depressive symptoms, and borderline symptoms.

Improved self-management ability and well-being in older women after a short group intervention.

In the present randomized controlled trial (RCT) it was investigated whether single women, 55 years of age and older, improved with regard to self-management ability, well-being, and social and emotional loneliness after having participated in a newly designed self-management group intervention based on the Self-Management of Well-being (SMW) theory. The expected mediating effect of self-management ability on well-being was not found. Although self-management ability, well-being and loneliness improved significantly in the intervention group immediately after the intervention, and also remained at this improved level after six months, there was also improvement in the control group after six months, rendering the longer-term differences between the groups non-significant. It can, however, be concluded that, although the longer-term effectiveness could not be proven, this SMW theory-based intervention seems to be useful in supporting older women to improve their self-management ability and well-being.

Autobiographical memory in depressed and non-depressed patients with borderline personality disorder.

OBJECTIVES: The present study investigated the specificity of autobiographical memories among depressed and non-depressed borderline patients, compared with depressed patients and controls. The influence of childhood trauma, intrusions of traumatic events, avoidance of intrusions, dissociation and depression on memory specificity was also studied. METHOD: The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT), a trauma interview and self-report measures of intrusions, avoidance, depression and dissociation were administered to 83 borderline outpatients, 26 depressed outpatients and 30 controls. RESULTS: Depressed borderline patients and depressed patients reported fewer specific memories than controls. Depressed patients generated fewer specific memories than non-depressed borderline patients. Neither trauma nor traumatic intrusions, avoidance of intrusions or dissociation were related to the specificity of memories. Level of depressive symptoms (BDI) was also not related, but the presence of a depression was. CONCLUSION: In this large sample of outpatients with borderline personality disorder, only the subgroup with a co-morbid diagnosis of depression had trouble remembering specific events from the past. Trauma, intrusions, avoidance of intrusions and dissociation seem to be unrelated to the specificity of autobiographical memories in borderline personality disorder.