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Published in: Current Psychiatry Reports 2/2019

01-02-2019 | Psychotherapy | Personality Disorders (K Bertsch, Section Editor)

Parenting in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder, Sequelae for the Offspring and Approaches to Treatment and Prevention

Authors: Julian G. Florange, Sabine C. Herpertz

Published in: Current Psychiatry Reports | Issue 2/2019

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Abstract

Purpose of Review

We review recent findings concerning the implications of borderline personality disorder (BPD) on parenting behaviors, the parent-child relationships, and parental and child outcomes. We focus on self-report and interview data characterizing parents with BPD and their children as well as on observational paradigms investigating parent-child relationships and the quality of dyadic interactions. Novel treatment approaches are discussed.

Recent Findings

Parents with BPD suffer from increased parenting stress and display characteristic behavioral patterns towards their children, impeding the formation of a healthy parent-child relationship and disrupting offspring emotional development. Offspring are at greater risk of maltreatment and developing BPD themselves, with parental affective instability playing a substantial mediating role.

Summary

Mothers with BPD face a meaningful burden in their parenting role. Mechanisms of the transmission of BPD pathology onto the following generation are beginning to be understood. Targeted interventions have been devised recently, with preliminary testing producing encouraging results.
Footnotes
1
Tronick’s still face paradigm is a standardized, video-taped procedure in which following a 2-min period of normal interaction with her child, the mother is required to keep a still-face for another 2 min facing her child, again followed by 2 min of normal interaction.
 
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Metadata
Title
Parenting in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder, Sequelae for the Offspring and Approaches to Treatment and Prevention
Authors
Julian G. Florange
Sabine C. Herpertz
Publication date
01-02-2019
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Current Psychiatry Reports / Issue 2/2019
Print ISSN: 1523-3812
Electronic ISSN: 1535-1645
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-019-0996-1

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