Compare early maladaptive schemas of borderline personality disorder and bipolar mood disorder

This study was conducted to specify whether early maladaptive schemas have a precursor impact on borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar mood disorder (BMD). In accordance with this purpose, schema dimensions belonging to both disorders were obtained, the differences and similarities with regards to schemas were identified by compairing the dimensions of those schemas. It was evaluated whether the present differences can be used for the purpose of discriminative diagnosis among disorders. In order to collect data for the research, 32 participants, who were diagnosed as BPD and 30 participants, who were diagnosed as BMP, in total 62 participants were reached. Participants were applied Young Schema Quastionnaire-Short Form 3 (YSQ-SF3), Borderline Personality Inventory (BPI) and Mood Disorder Quastionnaire (MDQ). The relations between the variations were investigated on obtained data by applying t-test for independent samples. In consequence of the analysis, except for "punitiveness" and "high standarts", all of the schema dimensions in BPD diagnosis areas were found substantially higher in comparison with BMD diagnosis areas. This finding obtained from Schema Quastionnaire result shows that schema dimension is such as predictor for those two disorders that is confused frequently in clinical area and can be used as definitive diagnosis. Additionally, it was found that the BPI results of the participants who had BPD were significantly higher than the participants who had BMD. This result indicated that BPI might be used for diagnosis of BPD and it is functional to distinguish BPD from BMD. Although BPI results were in this manner, it was found that MDQ scores did not become distinct as significant between the ones that had BPD and the ones who had BMD. This finding shows that MDQ is not a distinguishing factor upon disorders. All analysis results were explicated in the findings section, evaluated and discussed with literature in the results section. Key Words: Early Maladaptive Schemas, Bipolar Mood Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Schema Therapy.