How do mothers with borderline personality disorder mentalize when interacting with their infants?
Article [Accepted Manuscript]
Abstract(s)
Mothers with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have been theorized to have
decreased mentalization ability, which is the capacity to perceive and interpret
mental states. This could increase the risk for troubled relationships with their
infants and therefore have adverse consequences for child social and emotional
development. Mind-mindedness (MM), which codes the mother's references to her
infant's mental states during an interaction, is one method of indexing mothers'
mentalizing ability. However, research has yet to examine MM in mothers with BPD.
Our objective was to assess the MM ability of 38 mothers during interactions with
their 12-month-old infants, including 10 mothers with BPD and 28 mothers without
a psychiatric diagnosis. Trained observers assessed maternal MM from 2 min of
videotaped mother-infant free play. BPD was assessed with the Structured Clinical
Interview for DSM-III-R-Personality Disorders (SCID-II). Mothers with and without
BPD did not differ in the proportion of total comments referring to infant mental
states. However, mothers in the BPD group proportionately made 3.6 times more
misattuned mind-related comments than control mothers. Thus, mothers with and
without BPD appear equally likely to envision mental states in their infants.
However, mothers with BPD also appear more likely to misread their infants'
mental states.
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