A comparison of performance on measures of recent memory in depressed inpatients with and without borderline personality disorder.

摘要

Recent Studies have demonstrated memory deficits in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) when compared to normal control subjects. Since borderline patients characteristically live with emotion dysregulation and many suffer from chronic depression, the present study sought to investigate whether patients with BPD would show these deficits relative to other depressed patients. The participants were 23 borderline depressed patients and 21 non-borderline depressed patients recently admitted to a state psychiatric facility. Three instruments were used to assess verbal and non-verbal memory. They were the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), the Logical Memory (LM) subtest of the Weschsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R), and the Rey Complex Figure and Recognition Test (RCET). Screening tests to rule out IQ, attention, motor skills, and level of depression as confounding variables were also administered. The Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R) was used along with the DSM-IV to diagnose BPD. It was hypothesized that the borderline depressed patients would exhibit more memory deficits than the depressed controls on recall tasks but would perform comparably to depressed controls on the less effortful cued recall and recognition tasks.; Statistically significant results were found only on the CVLT, although both groups showed mild to moderate impairment on the RCFT. The borderline patients performed significantly more poorly than depressed controls on CVLT Trial 1, List A, and, contrary to expectations, scored significantly more poorly on the cued recall measures. Differences on the other CVLT recall trials showed the same trends but did not reach statistical significance. The borderline patients used the learning strategy, semantic clustering, significantly less often than the depressed controls which may account for their lack of relative benefit from cueing. Performance of the two groups on recognition tasks were comparable. The results suggest that depression alone does not account for memory problems in patients with BPD. Further neuropsychological research with these patients is justified and important to understanding this complex disorder.