@article{ref1,
title="Emotional hyperreactivity in response to childhood abuse by primary caregivers in patients with borderline personality disorder",
journal="Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry",
year="2015",
author="Lobbestael, Jill and Arntz, Arnoud",
volume="48",
number="",
pages="125-132",
abstract="BACKGROUND: One of the core postulated features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is extreme emotional reactivity to a wide array of evocative stimuli. <br><br>FINDINGS from previous experimental research however are mixed, and some theories suggest specificity of hyper emotional responses, as being related to abuse, rejection and abandonment only. <br><br>OBJECTIVE: The current experiment examines the specificity of emotional hyperreactivity in BPD. <br><br>METHOD: The impact of four film clips (BPD-specific: childhood abuse by primary caregivers; BPD-nonspecific: peer bullying; positive; and neutral) on self-reported emotional affect was assessed in three female groups; BPD-patients (n = 24), cluster C personality disorder patients (n = 17) and non-patient controls (n = 23). <br><br>RESULTS: Results showed that compared to the neutral film clip, BPD-patients reacted with more overall negative affect following the childhood abuse clip, and with more anger following the peer bullying clip than the two other groups. LIMITATIONS: The current study was restricted to assessment of the impact of evocative stimuli on self-reported emotions, and the order in which the film clips were presented to the participants was fixed. <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that BPD-patients only react generally excessively emotional to stimuli related to childhood abuse by primary caregivers, and with excessive anger to peer-bullying stimuli. These findings are thus not in line with the core idea of general emotional hyperreactvity in BPD.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0005-7916",
doi="10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.03.005",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.03.005"
}