Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms in Fathers Predict Offspring Outcomes in Young Adulthood Público
Johnson, Elaine (Summer 2020)
Abstract
Maternal Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) symptoms have been significantly linked to internalizing and externalizing disorders in adolescents and young adults. The impact of BPD symptoms on offspring outcomes may be explained by several potential mechanisms including genetics and child temperament, parenting characteristics including high negative expressed emotion, and/or family stress and instability. The existing literature that explores these intergenerational associations and related mechanisms focuses primarily on maternal BPD symptoms with very little study of BPD symptoms in fathers as they relate to offspring psychopathology. Given the evidence that fathers play a distinctive role in their children’s risk for disorders, it is of importance to understand how fathers with BPD symptoms may also impact their offspring. The proposed study was designed to fill this gap in the literature by exploring paternal BPD and associated offspring outcomes in a sample of 448 families who were followed longitudinally into young adulthood. We hypothesized that paternal BPD characteristics would predict young adult BPD, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms, and that these associations would remain significant after controlling for maternal BPD. We also hypothesized that parenting quality, family stress, and child temperament would act as mediators between paternal BPD and young adult behavioral and psychological outcomes. Finally, we explored offspring sex as a moderator of these relationships, as well as the role of comorbid psychological diagnoses in explaining the impact of paternal BPD on offspring outcomes. Our results partially supported these hypotheses. First, paternal BPD symptoms were predictive of youth BPD symptoms above and beyond maternal BPD symptoms. However, when both comorbid paternal internalizing and externalizing diagnoses were controlled, paternal BPD symptoms were no longer predictive of offspring BPD symptoms. Chronic stress was found to be a significant mediator of paternal BPD and offspring BPD, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms, while parenting quality and child temperament were not. Additionally, while sex predicted youth outcomes, it was not a significant moderator of the association between paternal BPD and young adult symptoms. Further studies are needed to explore how paternal BPD symptoms and associated risks influence the development of psychopathology in young adults.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………….7
Materials & Methods………………….16
Participants……………………16
Measures………………………17
Results…………………………………20
Discussion……………………………..23
References……………………………..28
Figures…………………………………37
Tables………………………………….38
List of Figures
Figure 1. SCID II Questionnaire
List of Tables
Table 1. Descriptive Data
Table 2. Bivariate Correlations
Table 3 Indirect effects of Chronic Family Stress on Paternal BPD and Offspring Outcomes
Table 4. Indirect effects of Chronic Family Stress – Maternal BPD controlled
Table 5. Gender as a Moderator Between Parental BPD and Offspring Outcomes
About this Master's Thesis
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