Neuro-Cognitive Remediation of Emotion Processing in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder through Psychotherapy

Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy has used neuroscience findings to propose the specific neuroaffective deficits in processing the emotional experiences as etiology of the borderline personalitydisorder. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy to improve the symptoms in patients diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder byremediation of neuro-affective defects. This study was designed as a randomized controlled trial using the pre-test, post-test, and control group. Thirty patients who were diagnosed with borderline personalitydisorder meeting the inclusion criteria randomly divided into two groups. Both groups evaluated using both the Borderline Evaluation of Severity over Time (BEST) and Patient Health Questionnaire Mood Scale (PHQ-9) questionnaires at the baseline and the over course of the treatment. Data analysis using repeated measures ANOVA indicated that the effect of measuring time (p=0.001) and time/group (p=0.010) on linear combination of the severity of borderline disorder and depression were significant. This result supports the efficacy of Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy based on the neurocognitive remediation of emotion processing using association, attribution and alterity techniques.