P03-85 Borderline Personality Disorder in adolescents - personality traits in the adolescents and in the parents

Abstract

The research goal is to describe and characterize the psychological dynamics of the adolescents diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and their parents, observing the dominant personality styles in adolescents with BPD and the personality traits of the parents (mother and father).Considering that recent studies underline the importance of family interactions in the pathogenesis of BPD we will analyze the relation between personality characteristics of the adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder and the parents’ personality traits.The exploratory and comparative study has a sample comprised of 21 adolescents (11 boys and 10 girls) with ages between 16 and 18 years old, observed in child mental health services and 34 parents (N = 55).Adolescents will be assessed with the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI) and the parents with the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III).The results showed that the parents obtained high mean scores in the Compulsive and Narcissistic Personality Traits. the adolescents showed high mean scores on the Unruly, Forceful and Egotistic personality styles scales.The studies on BPD have some limitations, namely the fact that they normally observe the adult population, with fewer research dedicated to adolescents.We consider that there is a need to search for the aetiological factors of the disorder and possible developmental patterns and if it is a personality disorder research should look to the personality traits of the adolescents and to their relational environment as a way to overcome those limitations.