Abstract
BackgroundBorderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with multiple psychopathological domains; so studying the correlation of clinical or behavioral data with underlying structural and functional neurological findings in BPD is the focus of interest in recent years.The aim of our study was to compare the presence of neurological soft signs (NSS) in patients with borderline personality disorder with their presence in normal controls, and to correlate the severity of different symptoms of BPD with the presence of NSS through a case-control study which was conducted on 30 patients and 30 matching controls recruited from Al Kasr Al Ainy Hospital, Cairo University, Egypt. All subjects were assessed by the Borderline Personality Questionnaire, the Barratt Impulsivity Scale-11, the Brief Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Assessment tool, and the Cambridge Neurological Inventory.ResultsThe BPD group had significantly higher total NSS scores, primitive reflexes subscale score, and sensory integration subscale scores. There was also a positive correlation between NSS and overall severity of borderline symptoms.ConclusionsThe increased rates of NSS were associated with specific clinical symptoms in BPD including suicidality, self-harm, emptiness, and quasi-psychosis. Impulsivity was found to have the highest correlation with NSS.
Highlights
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with multiple psychopathological domains; so studying the correlation of clinical or behavioral data with underlying structural and functional neurological findings in BPD is the focus of interest in recent years
While there was no specific focal neurological deficit identified in patients with BPD [8], there was an increased observation of mild neurological soft signs in this population (NSS) [9, 10]; De la Fuente et al [9] in their study found that 13 of the soft neurological signs were significantly higher in borderline personality disorder patients than controls
Neurological soft signs have been studied in several psychiatric populations, initially schizophrenia, afterwards obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, and others, while they have been more recently studied in BPD; apart from diagnosis, patients with different diagnoses showed more NSS than healthy subjects, NSS were already present at the onset of the disease and showed a significant correlation with psychopathological measures [13,14,15,16]
Summary
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with multiple psychopathological domains; so studying the correlation of clinical or behavioral data with underlying structural and functional neurological findings in BPD is the focus of interest in recent years. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe and heterogeneous mental disturbance connoted by a pattern of identity diffusion, interpersonal disturbances, and chronic instability, with episodes of severe affective and impulsive discontrol [1]. This disorder is a leading contributor to the burden of disease in the community as it is associated with adverse long-term outcomes that include severe and continual functional disability [2], physical ill health [3], and premature mortality [4]. Later attempts to link NSS with common symptoms in BPD have shown, among others, that higher impulsivity was linked to higher NSS [17]
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