title: The relationship of early maternal separation to borderline personality in children and adolescents: a pilot study.
abstract: The author compared 14 child and adolescent borderline patients, diagnosed by the criteria of Gunderson and Singer (1), with a control population for history of separation from the mother or significant caretaker before age 10. The borderline patients experienced a statistically greater number of separations than the psychotic controls, the nonpsychotic psychiatric controls, and the nonpsychiatrically-referred delinquent controls before age 5 but not between ages 5 and 10. The author concludes that the study provides statistical support for the theoretic role of disruption of the early infant-mother bond in borderline pathology.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005824:Genetics, Behavioral; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008426:Maternal Deprivation; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology