Symptom Structures of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Individuals from communities characterized by high crime rates, violence, poverty, and social disadvantages are of greater risk to develop PTSD. Due to high comorbidity rates between PTSD and borderline personality disorder (BPD), recently, complex PTSD was introduced. Complex PTSD contains, next to PTSD symptoms, the additional symptoms as disturbances in self-organization (DSO) and negative alterations in cognitions and mood (NACM). However, it remains unclear how symptoms of complex PTSD, PTSD, and BPD are related in an at-risk, urban sample. The present study explored the relations between PTSD, BPD, DSO symptoms and NACMs using a network approach. The symptoms were assessed using semi-structured clinical interviews. Participants (N = 470; 98.1% female; 97.7% African-American) were recruited by Powers et al. (2022) from medical clinics within urban areas in the USA. Two network analysis were estimated using EBICglasso model to create regularized partial correlation networks. The...Show moreIndividuals from communities characterized by high crime rates, violence, poverty, and social disadvantages are of greater risk to develop PTSD. Due to high comorbidity rates between PTSD and borderline personality disorder (BPD), recently, complex PTSD was introduced. Complex PTSD contains, next to PTSD symptoms, the additional symptoms as disturbances in self-organization (DSO) and negative alterations in cognitions and mood (NACM). However, it remains unclear how symptoms of complex PTSD, PTSD, and BPD are related in an at-risk, urban sample. The present study explored the relations between PTSD, BPD, DSO symptoms and NACMs using a network approach. The symptoms were assessed using semi-structured clinical interviews. Participants (N = 470; 98.1% female; 97.7% African-American) were recruited by Powers et al. (2022) from medical clinics within urban areas in the USA. Two network analysis were estimated using EBICglasso model to create regularized partial correlation networks. The first to explore the overall structure of PTSD, BPD, and complex PTSD, the second to investigate the relatedness of the NACM and DSO symptoms. The results were in line with previous studies and indicated that the NACM symptoms play a crucial role in the PTSD structure, in connecting PTSD with the DSOs. BPD and DSO symptoms were related via emotional dysregulation. Of the specific NACM symptoms, trauma-related amnesia was more related to BPD than to PTSD, and DSO symptom. This suggests BPD and PTSD to be distinct, complex PTSD to be phenomenologically related to both and the NACM and DSO symptoms to be associated with each other.Show less

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Symptom Structures of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder