Borderline personality disorder symptoms and severity of sexual abuse

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the relationship of specific symptoms of borderline personality disorder to dimensions of severity of sexual abuse experiences in childhood. METHOD: A group of 41 patients with borderline personality disorder who retrospectively reported a childhood history of sexual abuse on the Familial Experiences Interview were studied. Six items from the Diagnostic Interview for Borderline Patients (DIB) were chosen on the basis of their univariate (chi-square) association with a sexual abuse severity scale that was developed by the authors and their research team. These six DIB items were each modeled in a logistic regression. Predictor variables were the most severe experience within each of three dimensions of sexual abuse: 1) perpetrator (sexual abuse by a parent), 2) duration (sexual abuse that was ongoing), and 3) type (sexual abuse that involved penetration). RESULTS: The severity dimension that was most frequently found to be a significant predictor of the sum of the six DIB items as well as the total scaled DIB score was the duration dimension. Ongoing sexual abuse predicted parasuicidal behavior as well. CONCLUSIONS: Ongoing sexual abuse may be a strong determinant of specific aspects of the disordered interpersonal behavior and functioning found in patients with borderline personality disorder. The expectation that the world is an empty, malevolent place may have some of its roots in the repetition of sexual abuse experiences in childhood. This expectation of malevolence among patients with borderline personality disorder may manifest itself in psychotherapy through regressive and distancing behavior.