Etiological factors in borderline personality disorder: Early childhood experiences, parent-child relationships and the role of parental psychopathology

In this dissertartion, the effects of early childhood experiences, parent-child relationships and the role of parental factors on borderline personality disorder (BPD) were examined in two separate studies carried otu with both community and clinical samples. The data of the community sample study was collected online or in person from 374 participants between the ages of 18-35, and the participants were reached through snowball sampling method. The data of the clinical sample study consists of participants who are between ages 18-35 and applied to various hospitals for outpatient treatment, as well as participants who do not have any complaints and were reached through snowball sampling method from the community sample. In this context the analyses of the clinical sample study were conducted with the data of 88 participants diagnosed with BPD, other psychiatric disorders and healthy individuals. Within the scope of the study, the adaptation, reliability and validity study of the Inadequate Boundaries Questionnaire-IBQ, which is used to evaluate boundary violations in parent-child relationship, was conducted, and the analyses of the study were conducted with 505 participants reached via sonwball sampling method from the community sample. IBQ, which was adapted in the first phase of the study has been brought to the local literature as a valid and reliable instrument that evluates the boundary violations in the individuals' relationships with his/her parents in terms of various sub-dimensions. The main findings of the study revealed that the trauma scores of participants diagnosed with BPD were significantly higher than both the scores of participants with other psychiatric diagnoses and the scores of healthy participants. Findings showed that perceived care and warmth scores of healthy participants from both mother and father were significantly higher than the scores of participants with BPD and other psychiatric diagnoses, whereas there was no significant difference in terms of enmeshment scores between the groups.There was no significant difference between the group diagnosed with BPD and group with other psiychiatric diagnoses in terms of perceived psychological control and guilt induction scores from mother, whereas the scores of the BPD diagnosed group were significantly higher than the scores of the other psychiatric diagoneses group in terms of perceived psychological control and guilt induction scores from father. Analyses of the data from the community sample study revealed that the variable that most strongly predicted BPD in the model established for the mother was the low level of care and warmth perceived from mother on the other hand the variable that most strongly predicted BPD in the model established for the father was the high level of psychological control and guilt induction perceived from the father.