What is it about?
Patients with borderline personality disorder have problems with unstable identities and social relationships. Here we show that even their thoughts about themselves and about others fluctuate more strongly over time during mind-wandering. Unstable thought patterns may, thus, be a reason for the social problems and could be targeted in interventions.
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Why is it important?
Theoretical models of borderline personality disorder have proposed unstable representations of the self and others as core deficit. This is the first study to actually test the stability of thought patterns over time. Because of the unstable thought patterns, exercises to stabilize the mind could be fruitful interventions, possibly as implemented in the mindfulness trainings in dialectic-behavioral therapy.
Perspectives
While high instability in thoughts, as we found in borderline patients, seems to be problematic, it's quite clear that some fluctuations are absolutely adaptive. So my question is, what do hyper-stable thought patterns lead to?
Philipp Kanske
Technische Universitat Dresden
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The wandering mind in borderline personality disorder: Instability in self- and other-related thoughts, Psychiatry Research, August 2016, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2016.05.060.
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