Maternal borderline symptoms, parent-child relationship factors, and child adjustment across a one-year period

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health disorder that has as a hallmark feature disturbed interpersonal relatedness resulting from deficits in mentalization (Fonagy & Bateman, 2008) and emotion regulation (Jeung & Herpetz, 2014). In mothers, BPD symptoms are associated with parenting difficulties, maladaptive parent-child interactions, and child maladjustment. However, it is unclear whether BPD symptoms pose distinct risks to parenting independent of common co-occurring symptoms, particularly depression. Considering the characteristics of BPD symptoms, they may specifically impact aspects of parenting that draw on emotion regulation and mentalization capacities.
This poster will present findings from two samples of mothers of children age 3-18 that test this possibility. Sample 1 includes 214 mothers (78% non-Hispanic White, 11% African American, 3% Latina, 2% Asian-American, and 6% Multiracial) recruited from Mturk and assessed at two time points one-year apart. From these, 3% were above clinical cutoff for BPD and 18% for depression. Sample 2 includes 242 mothers (75.2% non-Hispanic White, 12.8% African American, 5.8% Latina, 2.5% Asian-American, and 2.9% Multiracial) recruited from Prolific who screened positive for a previous mental health diagnosis. In this sample, 10% were above clinical cutoff for BPD and 47% for depression. Participants completed self-report measures, open-ended questions about parenting experiences, and computerized mentalization tasks at two time points. Analyses included partial correlations and regression approaches to mediation and moderation. Baseline data has been collected on Sample 2; a 3-month follow-up will be completed in December 2020.
After controlling for depressive symptoms, mothers with more BPD symptoms reported reacting with greater hostility towards their child, attributed more blame to their child for misbehavior, and experienced more negativity in the parent-child relationship. In contrast, other parenting factors (e.g., self-attributions for child’s misbehavior) were no longer related to BPD symptoms after controlling for depression. The pattern of findings was similar across the community and higher clinical risk samples. In longitudinal analyses in Study 1, maternal BPD symptoms at baseline did not predict increases in child maladjustment over the one-year period. However, maternal BPD symptoms interacted with several parenting measures in predicting subsequent child maladjustment, suggesting the meaning of certain parenting risk factors differed depending on levels of BPD symptoms. For mothers high in BPD symptoms, using more negative emotions in talking about parenting difficulties and a stronger belief that children want to be alone with negative emotions predicted higher child internalizing and externalizing symptoms at follow-up, controlling for baseline child symptoms and maternal depressive symptoms. With the objective of testing the generalizability of these longitudinal results to clinical populations, once follow-up data is collected, we will conduct similar analysis in Sample 2.
This study highlights aspects of the mother-child relationship that may be impacted specifically by maternal BPD symptoms across two samples of varying risk, and thus gives potential directions for future research and targeted intervention efforts. Understanding the parenting domains affected by BPD symptoms and specific mechanisms of parenting risk is critical to the development of disorder-specific interventions aimed at preventing the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology.

Group Authors

Ana Luísa Barbosa Torreão Dáu, MSc
Stephanie Milan, PhD

Authors

• Ana Luisa Barbosa Torreao Dau, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Milan, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author