TY  - JOUR
T1  - FAmily study of borderline personality disorder and its sectors of psychopathology
AU  - Gunderson JG, Zanarini MC, Choi-Kain LW, Mitchell KS, Jang KL, Hudson JI
Y1  - 2011/07/01
N1  - 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.65
JO  - Archives of General Psychiatry
SP  - 753
EP  - 762
VL  - 68
IS  - 7
N2  - Context 
                  The familiality of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and its sectors of psychopathology are incompletely understood.Objectives 
                  To assess the familial aggregation of BPD and its 4 major sectors (affective, interpersonal, behavioral, and cognitive) and test whether the relationship of the familial and nonfamilial associations among these sectors can be accounted for by a latent BPD construct.Design 
                  Family study, with direct interviews of probands and relatives.Setting 
                  A psychiatric hospital (McLean Hospital) and the Boston-area community.Participants 
                  A total of 368 probands (132 with BPD, 134 without BPD, and 102 with major depressive disorder) and 885 siblings and parents of probands.Main Assessments 
                  The Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders and the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R) were used to assess borderline psychopathology, and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV was used to assess major depressive disorder.Results 
                  Borderline personality disorder meeting both DSM-IV and DIB-R criteria showed substantial familial aggregation for BPD in individuals with a family member with BPD vs those without a family member with BPD, using proband-relative pairs (risk ratio, 2.9; 95% confidence interval, 1.5-5.5) as well as using all pairs of family members (3.9; 1.7-9.0). All 4 sectors of BPD psychopathology aggregated significantly in families, using both DSM-IV and DIB-R definitions (correlation of traits among all pairs of family members ranged from 0.07 to 0.27), with the affective and interpersonal sectors showing the highest levels; however, the level of familial aggregation of BPD was higher than that of the individual sectors. The relationship among the sectors was best explained by a common pathway model in which the sectors represent manifestations of a latent BPD construct.Conclusions 
                  Familial factors contribute to BPD and its sectors of psychopathology. Borderline personality disorder may arise from a unitary liability that finds expression in its sectors of psychopathology.
SN  - 0003-990X
M3  - doi: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.65
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.65
ER  -