Nonverbal Communication of Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder During Clinical Interviews: A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study Using Intranasal Oxytocin
Abstract
Interpersonal dysfunction is central to borderline personality disorder (BPD). Recent research has focused on the role of oxytocin (OT) in BPD, with mixed results regarding the processing of social information. Fifteen BPD patients and 15 controls participated in two clinical interviews, one under OT and one under placebo, which were randomly conducted 1 week apart in a double-blind fashion. Nonverbal behavior was evaluated using the Ethological Coding System for Interviews. Childhood trauma was examined using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. The patients with BPD showed less affiliative behavior than the controls. Notably, the controls, but not the patients, displayed more affiliation when OT was given at T1 compared with OT given at T2. OT was also associated with less flight behavior in both groups when given at T1 compared with placebo. OT responses were unrelated to the patients' history of childhood trauma. The present findings are informative with respect to patients' nonverbal prosocial behavior in clinical settings.
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Recent work found that intranasal oxytocin did not improve anxiety or affiliative behaviour during therapy or clinical interview.
“This interpretation is in line with findings from recent work investigating the effectiveness of intranasal oxytocin as a treatment enhancer in depression and BPD, which found that intranasal oxytocin did not improve anxiety or affiliative behaviour during therapy or clinical interview (Brune et al., 2015;MacDonald et al., 2013).”
From Meta-analytic review of the effects of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin on threat processing in humans (2018) · cites this paper as Brune et al., 2015
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Brüne, M., Kolb, M., Ebert, A., Roser, P., & Edel, M.-A.
- Affiliations
- LWL-Universitätsklinikum Bochum (DE)
- Venue
- Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease
- Published
- 2015-02
- Volume
- 203
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 107-111
- ISSN
- 0022-3018 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2031497674
- Cited by
- 35
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 6.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Keywords
- borderline personality disorder, nonverbal communication, oxytocin, affiliative behavior, flight behavior, interpersonal problems, prosocial behavior, clinical interview, childhood trauma, social information processing
- MeSH terms
- Administration, Intranasal, Adult, Borderline Personality Disorder, Double-Blind Method, Female, Humans, Interview, Psychological, Male, Nonverbal Communication, Oxytocin, Placebos, Social Behavior, Time Factors, Treatment Outcome, Young Adult
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