Mentalities Sketches, Experience of Child Abuse and Attachment Styles with Borderline Personality Disorder

Early relationships of parents with children and traumatic events in childhood have a significant role in the formation of personality disorders. According to Yang, borderline personality disorder Characteristic is variable modes of thinking, feeling and behavior, which called it "mentality schema”. The present study aims to determine the difference between attachment styles and experience of child abuse in borderline personality disorder patients and normal subjects and also predict schematic mentalities in patients with borderline personality disorder based on the experience of child abuse and attachment styles. The study population were included all patients with borderline personality disorder referred to Razi hospital and  Mehr Andisheh counseling center in Tabriz that 60 patients were selected by purposive sampling method, (30 patients with borderline personality disorder and 30 normal subjects). Normal group were matched with borderline personality disorder patients in terms of demographic characteristics. Both groups completed Hazan and Shaver’s questionnaires of mentality schema (SMQ), and attachment styles (AAI), and the experience of child abuse (CASRS). Data analysis was performed by software SPSS version 17 and LISREL Version 54/8 and multi-way Analysis of variance test (MANOVA) and path analysis (Path Analysis). The results showed that research groups showed a significant difference in ambivalent attachment style and emotional abuse, neglect and sexual abuse, child abuse experience scale. The schematic mentalities of child abuse were predicted by attachment styles and scale of child abuse that avoidant attachment style and emotional and sexual abuse had greater share in this prediction. Obtained results support Young’s schema and insist on parents’ bad educational role and their negative initial relations with children on inefficient schematic mindsets. So that the formation of avoidant attachment style, and also experience of emotional and sexual abuse in childhood, makes a person be capable of borderline personality disorder in adulthood.