Overgeneral autobiographical memory predicts higher prospective levels of depressive symptoms and intrusions in borderline patients.
Overgeneral memory (OGM), the tendency to retrieve categories of events from autobiographical memory instead of single events, is found to be a reliable predictor for future mood disturbances and post-traumatic symptom severity. Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often report co-morbid episodes of major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therefore, we investigated whether OGM would predict depression severity and (post-traumatic) stress symptoms in BPD patients. At admission (N = 54) and at six-month follow-up (N ≥ 31), BPD patients completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Disorders, the Assessment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders, the Autobiographical Memory Test, the Beck Depression Inventory-2nd edition (BDI-II), and the Impact of Event Scale. OGM at baseline predicted (a) higher levels of depressive symptoms at follow-up and (b) more intrusions related to a stressful event over and above baseline levels of borderline symptoms, depressive symptoms, and intrusions, respectively. No association was found between memory specificity and event-related avoidance at follow-up. Despite previous findings suggesting that OGM in BPD is less robust than in MDD and PTSD, our results suggest that memory specificity in BPD patients may have some relevance for the course of depressive and stress symptomatology in BPD.
a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.|b University Psychiatric Centre KU Leuven , Kortenberg , Belgium.
Kris
K
Van den Broeck
a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.|b University Psychiatric Centre KU Leuven , Kortenberg , Belgium.
Guido
G
Pieters
a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.
Laurence
L
Claes
c Psychiatric Hospital Duffel , Duffel , Belgium.
Ann
A
Berens
a Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences , University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.
Filip
F
Raes
D000328:Adult; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010552:Personality Assessment; D055815:Young Adult
Overgeneral memory; borderline personality disorder; depression severity; intrusions; post-traumatic symptom severity