Social and emotional cognition in patients with severe migraine consulting in a tertiary headache center: A preliminary study

Twenty-three severe migraine participants were studied to investigate social and emotional cognition features and explore their relationship with depression, anxiety and alexithymia. In comparison to normative data, 74% were under the norm for the Faux Pas subtest, 13% for the facial emotion recognition subtest and 52% for the overall composite score of the mini-SEA. Factor 1, Factor 3, and the total score of the TAS-20 were negatively correlated with the Faux Pas subtest. Our preliminary study shows that severe migraine patients present difficulties in inferring mental states, which could be related to alexithymia. It would be useful to identify these impairments in order to improve the quality of care provided.Clinical Trials registration number: NCT03577548.     

Lecture des troubles de personnalité limite à travers la théorie de l’attachement

Borderline personality disorders concern clinicians and caregivers because of the violent and impulsive nature of their behavioral and affective reactions, which often confronts them to a feeling of helplessness and incomprehension. Indeed, it may be difficult to deal with self-harm, massive anxiety, intense affects and interpersonal ruptures, which are often present in the life course of the borderline patients. Their distress is particularly difficult to accept as it takes place in the therapeutic link, which reveals the core of the patient's attachment problematic. This paper aims to draw up an overview of borderline personality disorders, in light of attachment theory, which could help to clarify the involved mechanisms and gather the described behaviors in a coherent unit. Many studies relating to borderline personality disorder and attachment theory highlight what constitutes the specificity of these disorders through an integrative approach. Thus, the combination of an insecure attachment style, biological vulnerabilities and environmental stressors like traumatisms may induce the establishment of many defensive mechanisms, such as attachment system hyperactivation, emotional dysregulation or mentalization's failure. People suffering of borderline personality disorder activate these mechanisms as soon as they have to deal with real or imagined abandonments related to one of their attachment figures. However, in view of the massive anxiety and the severe disruption, those inefficient mechanisms cannot enable a good resolution of stressful situations. Consequently, borderline patients are likely to resort to new kind of emotional regulation such as suicidal, destructive and impulsive behaviors. Attachment based theories focus on these defensive mechanisms and inadequate attempts of emotional regulation, in order to propose an appropriate treatment for borderline personality disorder.     

Reflective functioning: A review

Reflective functioning offers an empirically grounded framework for the assessment of mentalization. This article briefly outlines the theory of mentalization and the development of the Reflective Functioning (RF) scale (Fonagy, Target, Steele, & Steele, 1998). It then offers a review and discussion of empirical studies of parental RF regarding the role of RF in linking adult and child attachment and parental RF in the context of psychopathology. Furthermore, empirical studies on RF in relation to different psychiatric populations and to the role of RF in psychotherapy process and outcome are reviewed and discussed. Although research on RF is still relatively limited, evidence seems to support the relevance of RF as an empirical measure in the fields of attachment, psychopathology and psychotherapy research. However, the RF scale has certain limitations due to the extensiveness of the measure, which future research should take into account.     

反思功能在精神病学中的研究进展

反思功能(Reflective Function,RF)为心智化的测量与实证研究提供了途径和框架.本文对RF的概念、测量工具做出了简要介绍,陈列并讨论了目前RF在不同精神病理学背景下的实证研究.RF作为一个新兴概念,相关研究主要在国外开展,各项研究已初步证明RF在精神病理学中所扮演的重要角色,随着RF测量工具的飞速进展,大样本量的实证研究将得到更多的开展.     

Schema therapy for borderline personality disorder: A comprehensive review of its empirical foundations,effectiveness and implementation possibilities

Borderline personality disorder is a serious psychiatric disorder for which the effectiveness of the current pharmacotherapeutical and psychotherapeutic approaches has shown to be limited. In the last decades, schema therapy has increased in popularity as a treatment of borderline personality disorder; however, systematic evaluation of both effectiveness and empirical evidence for the theoretical background of the therapy is limited. This literature review comprehensively evaluates the current empirical status of schema therapy for borderline personality disorder. We first described the theoretical framework and reviewed its empirical foundations. Next, we examined the evidence regarding effectiveness and implementability. We found evidence for a considerable number of elements of Young's schema model; however, the strength of the results varies and there are also mixed results and some empirical blanks in the theory. The number of studies on effectiveness is small, but reviewed findings suggest that schema therapy is a promising treatment. In Western-European societies, the therapy could be readily implemented as a cost-effective strategy with positive economic consequences.     

Perspective de prise en charge d’enfants atteints de troubles du spectre autistique par psychothérapie inspirée des thérapies basées sur la mentalisation

Mentalization is a process by which a subject makes sense of both his own mental representations and of those around him. Disturbances in the mentalization process are found in several psychiatric disorders, notably borderline personality disorders for which mentalization-based treatments (MBT) have been developed and evaluated. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) display a theory of mind impairments, which corresponds to disturbances in the mentalization process. Although no MBT protocol for patients with ASD has been described in the literature, such treatment appears promising to improve theory of mind and functional outcome of these children. In this paper, we propose to discuss the theoretical ground of MBT therapeutic effect in children with ASD without intellectual disabilities and to describe a clinical protocol to test this perspective.     

Thérapie basée sur la mentalisation et le trouble de personnalité limite

Theoretical background

The borderline personality disorder is a complex psychiatric disorder that represents a high number of patients in a psychiatric adult service. Even if some therapies have shown to be effective in the therapeutic care of the borderline personality disorder they only target certain symptoms (e.g. anxiety, sadness, self-mutilation). The aim of this paper is to introduce a therapeutic model little known in France: the mentalization based therapy (MBT) developed in 2004 by Bateman and Fonagy. This therapeutic model apprehends the borderline personality disorder in all its complexity and is based on two main concepts: Bowlby's attachment theory and the concept of mentalization. The MBT is based on the hypothesis that a deficit of mentalization leads to the development of borderline disorder. The capacity of mentalization, also known as reflexive function, is acquired in infancy through interpersonal relationships, in particular those of attachment, and is the ability to understand the mental state (emotions, needs, thoughts, etc.) of oneself and others which underlies explicit behaviour. This reflexive capacity is of a better quality when the person has a secure attachment style. Indeed, borderline patients have, mainly, a deficit of mentalization capacity associated with an insecure attachment style. Thus, the main objective of the Bateman and Fonagy approach is to develop and reinforce the mentalization capacity through a therapeutic relationship as a secure base, a group therapy and the concept of insight.

反思功能问卷-8 中文版的修订及信效度研究

目的 将反思功能问卷(Reflective Functioning Questionary-8,RFQ-8)引入中国,检验其在中国人群样本中的信效度.方法 选取沈阳在校大学生635名作为学校组,填写RFQ-8、米氏边缘性人格障碍检测表(MIS-BPD)、多伦多述情障碍量表(TAS-20)、五因素正念度量表(FFMQ).选取同期在中国医科大学附属盛京医院心理门诊就诊,用MIS-BPD筛查所得的具有边缘型人格特质的患者75例作为临床组,填写RFQ-8.间隔3周后,随机抽取47名大学生完成重测.结果 过度心智化(RFQ-C)、心智化缺陷(RFQ-U)分量表的一致性信度分别为0.673,0.514,重测信度分别为0.686,0.538.与TAS、FFMQ、MIS-BPD的关联效度检验表明RFQ-8的信效度良好.临床组RFQ-U得分高于学校组,RFQ-C得分低于学校组,差异均有统计学意义(P<0.01).RFQ-U与父母教育程度呈负相关,RFQ-C与其正相关(P<0.01).结论 修订的RFQ-8具有良好的信度和效度,适用于中国成人反思功能的测量.研究初步显示RFQ-8具有一定的筛查价值,需进一步在临床样本中试用.