The Violent Accounts of Men Diagnosed With Comorbid Antisocial and Borderline Personality Disorders

Shame-coping clusters: comparisons regarding attachment insecurities, mentalizing deficits, and personality pathology, controlling for general emotion dysregulation

BACKGROUND

General Emotion Dysregulation (GED) is increasingly implicated as an underlying factor in personality pathology; however, the regulation of specific emotions, such as shame, has been relatively overlooked in the literature. We aimed to identify distinct clusters of shame-coping/regulation and compare them regarding attachment insecurities, mentalizing deficits, and personality pathology, controlling for GED.

METHODS

A convenience sample of 600 participants (351 females and 249 males) from the general population with ages ranging from 18 to 65 (M = 33.78, SD = 12.80) completed a battery of self-report instruments, measuring shame-coping styles, GED, attachment insecurities, mentalizing deficits, criteria A and B of the alternative model for personality disorders, and borderline personality traits. A two-stage clustering method was employed, with shame-coping styles as the clustering variables. The identified clusters were then compared for their effects on dependent variables using multivariate and univariate analyses. These comparisons were also performed after controlling for GED.

RESULTS

Multiple determination methods suggested a two-cluster solution: maladaptive and adaptive shame-coping. Attack-self, withdrawal, and attack-other styles were the main discriminators. Compared with the adaptive cluster, the maladaptive cluster was characterized by higher use of maladaptive and lower use of adaptive shame-coping styles. Multivariate analyses demonstrated significant differences for all the between-cluster comparisons, with and without GED as the covariate (p < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

The current study provides evidence for the presence of homogenous clusters of shame-coping in community-based adults. Between-cluster contrasts after controlling for GED suggest that addressing shame-coping could have incremental utility over and above GED.

Oxytocin receptor gene, childhood maltreatment and borderline personality disorder features among male inmates in China

BACKGROUND

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is caused by a variety of biological and environmental factors. Accumulating evidence suggests that childhood maltreatment is a risk environmental factor in the development of BPD, but research on the genetic pathology of BPD is still in its early stages, and very little is known about the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. The purpose of this study is to further explore the interactive effects between OXTR gene polymorphisms and childhood maltreatment on BPD risk.

METHODS

Among the 1804 Chinese Han male inmates, 765 inmates who had BPD or antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or highly impulsive or violent crime were considered as high-risk inmates and included in this study. Childhood maltreatment, BPD, antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and impulsivity were measured by self-reported questionnaires. Peripheral venous blood was collected for the genotype test.

RESULTS

Analyses revealed that the BP group (inmates with BPD features) had higher rs53576 AA genotype frequency and rs237987 AA genotype frequency than the non-BP group, while the statistical significances were lost after Bonferroni correction. Total childhood maltreatment score, emotional abuse and neglect could positively predict BPD risk. Among the high-risk samples, rs53576 GG genotype carriers had higher BPD scores at higher levels of physical abuse and sexual abuse and had lower BPD scores at lower levels of physical abuse and sexual abuse.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that the interaction between OXTR gene variations and childhood maltreatment is an important mechanism for the development of BPD. The moderating role of the OXTR gene provides evidence for gene plasticity.