Abstract
Early maladaptive traits are predictive of later borderline personality pathology (BPP), but little is known about their dynamic interplay over time. This is an important issue to address, however, as significant differences in the ‘clinical weight’ of various traits constituting the early BPP trait phenotype may inform the field on important target constructs from an early intervention perspective. Therefore, the current study aims to uncover the complex dependencies between BPP traits across the crucial developmental period of childhood and adolescence, by using longitudinal network analysis. Both between- and within-person networks were constructed to identify how early mother-reported borderline-related traits are connected across a timespan of six years (ntime 1 = 718, Mtime1 = 10.73 years, SDtime1 = 1.39, 55.1% girls). Overall, the temporal network suggested various trait interdependencies, with internalizing traits being particularly influential in the development of the BPP trait network structure. At the same time, externalizing traits likely inhibit the negative effects of these core traits. In addition, results also revealed that internalizing and externalizing clusters of early borderline-related traits are linked through emotional lability. Implications of these findings are discussed in view of the change mechanisms at play and potential targets for early intervention.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of Data
Data is available upon request.
Code Availability
Code is available upon request.
Notes
14% of the children were in psychological treatment, including anxiety or depressive complaints (40.9%), behavioral problems (9%), psychosomatic complaints (4.5%), problems in divorce processing (13.6%), social problems (9.1%), problems related to a developmental disorder (9.1%) and victimization of bullying (13.6%).
References
Beauchaine, T. P., Hinshaw, S. P., & Bridge, J. A. (2019). Nonsuicidal self-injury and suicidal behaviors in girls: The case for targeted prevention in preadolescence. Clinical Psychological Science : A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 7(4), 643–667. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618818474
Beauchaine, T. P., Klein, D. N., Crowell, S. E., Derbidge, C., & Gatzke-Kopp, L. (2009). Multifinality in the development of personality disorders: A Biology x Sex x Environment interaction model of antisocial and borderline traits. Development and Psychopathology, 21(3), 735–770. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579409000418
Bleidorn, W., Schwaba, T., Zheng, A., Hopwood, C. J., Sosa, S. S., Roberts, B. W., & Briley, D. A. (2022). Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 148(7–8), 588–619. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000365
Bornovalova, M. A., Verhulst, B., Webber, T., McGue, M., Iacono, W. G., & Hicks, B. M. (2018). Genetic and environmental influences on the codevelopment among borderline personality disorder traits, major depression symptoms, and substance use disorder symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood. Development and Psychopathology, 30(1), 49–65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579417000463
Borsboom, D. (2017). A network theory of mental disorders. World Psychiatry : Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 16(1), 5–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20375
Borsboom, D., & Cramer, A. O. (2013). Network analysis: An integrative approach to the structure of psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 9, 91–121. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050212-185608
Boschloo, L., van Borkulo, C. D., Rhemtulla, M., Keyes, K. M., Borsboom, D., & Schoevers, R. A. (2015). The network structure of symptoms of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. PLoS ONE, 10(9), e0137621. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137621
Bozzatello, P., Garbarini, C., Rocca, P., & Bellino, S. (2021). Borderline personality disorder: Risk factors and early detection. Diagnostics (basel, Switzerland), 11(11), 2142. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11112142
Bringmann, L. F., Albers, C., Bockting, C., Borsboom, D., Ceulemans, E., Cramer, A., Epskamp, S., Eronen, M. I., Hamaker, E., Kuppens, P., Lutz, W., McNally, R. J., Molenaar, P., Tio, P., Voelkle, M. C., & Wichers, M. (2022). Psychopathological networks: Theory, methods and practice. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 149, 104011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2021.104011
Caspi, A., Houts, R. M., Belsky, D. W., Goldman-Mellor, S. J., Harrington, H., Israel, S., Meier, M. H., Ramrakha, S., Shalev, I., Poulton, R., & Moffitt, T. E. (2014). The p Factor: One general psychopathology factor in the structure of psychiatric disorders? Clinical Psychological Science : A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2(2), 119–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702613497473
Calvo, N., Valero, S., Sáez-Francàs, N., Gutiérrez, F., Casas, M., & Ferrer, M. (2016). Borderline personality disorder and personality inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5): Dimensional personality assessment with DSM-5. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 70, 105–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2016.07.002
Chanen, A. M., & Kaess, M. (2012). Developmental pathways to borderline personality disorder. Current Psychiatry Reports, 14(1), 45–53. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-011-0242-y
Chang, B., Sharp, C., & Ha, C. (2011). The criterion validity of the borderline personality features scale for children in an adolescent inpatient setting. Journal of Personality Disorders, 25(4), 492–503. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi.2011.25.4.492
Choate, A. M., Fatimah, H., & Bornovalova, M. A. (2021). Comorbidity in borderline personality: Understanding dynamics in development. Current Opinion in Psychology, 37, 104–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.09.015
Dahl, R. E., Allen, N. B., Wilbrecht, L., & Suleiman, A. B. (2018). Importance of investing in adolescence from a developmental science perspective. Nature, 554(7693), 441–450. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25770
De Clercq, B., De Fruyt, F., Van Leeuwen, K., & Mervielde, I. (2006). The structure of maladaptive personality traits in childhood: A step toward an integrative developmental perspective for DSM-V. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115(4), 639–657. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.115.4.639
De Clercq, B., De Fruyt, F., De Bolle, M., Van Hiel, A., Markon, K. E., & Krueger, R. F. (2014). The hierarchical structure and construct validity of the PID-5 trait measure in adolescence. Journal of Personality, 82(2), 158–169. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12042
De Clercq, B., Decuyper, M., & De Caluwé, E. (2014). Developmental manifestations of borderline personality pathology from an age-specific dimensional personality disorder trait framework. In C. Sharp & J. L. Tackett (Eds.), Handbook of borderline personality disorder in children and adolescents (pp. 81–94). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0591-1_7
De Clercq, B., Van Leeuwen, K., Van den Noortgate, W., De Bolle, M., & De Fruyt, F. (2009). Childhood personality pathology: Dimensional stability and change. Development and Psychopathology, 21(3), 853–869. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579409000467
DeShong, H. L., Grant, D. M., & Mullins-Sweatt, S. N. (2019). Precursors of the emotional cascade model of borderline personality disorder: The role of neuroticism, childhood emotional vulnerability, and parental invalidation. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 10(4), 317–329. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000330
Eaton, N. R., Krueger, R. F., Keyes, K. M., Skodol, A. E., Markon, K. E., Grant, B. F., & Hasin, D. S. (2011). Borderline personality disorder co-morbidity: Relationship to the internalizing-externalizing structure of common mental disorders. Psychological Medicine, 41(5), 1041–1050. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291710001662
Epskamp, S. (2020). Psychometric network models from time-series and panel data. Psychometrika, 85(1), 206–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-020-09697-3
Epskamp, S. (2022). Qgraph: Graph plotting methods, psychometric data visualization and graphical model estimation. R package version 1.9.2. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/qgraph/
Epskamp, S. (2023). Psychonetrics: Structural equation modeling and confirmatory network analysis. R package version 0.11. http://psychonetrics.org/
Epskamp, S., Rhemtulla, M., & Borsboom, D. (2017). Generalized network psychometrics: Combining network and latent variable models. Psychometrika, 82(4), 904–927. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-017-9557-x
Epskamp, S., van Borkulo, C. D., van der Veen, D. C., Servaas, M. N., Isvoranu, A. M., Riese, H., & Cramer, A. O. J. (2018). Personalized Network Modeling in Psychopathology: The Importance of Contemporaneous and Temporal Connections. Clinical Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 6(3), 416–427. https://doi.org/10.1177/216770261774432
Fleck, L., Fuchs, A., Moehler, E., Williams, K., Koenig, J., Resch, F., & Kaess, M. (2023). Child versus adolescent borderline personality disorder traits: Frequency, psychosocial correlates, and observed mother–child interactions. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 14(2), 196–206. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000574
Franssens, R., Abrahams, L., Brenning, K., Van Leeuwen, K., & De Clercq, B. (2021). Unraveling Prospective Reciprocal Effects between Parental Invalidation and Pre-Adolescents’ Borderline Traits: Between- and Within-Family Associations and Differences with Common Psychopathology-Parenting Transactions. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 49(10), 1387–1401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00825-w
Franssens, R., Abrahams, L., Van Raemdonck, L., Verbeke, L., & De Clercq, B. (2022). Capturing between- and within-person variability of borderline traits in youth from a developmentally sensitive situational judgment perspective. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2022.2093732. Advance online publication.
Franssens, R., Giletta, M., Vanwoerden, S., & De Clercq, B. (2022). Bullying perpetration and victimization as social mechanisms in the development of borderline personality traits during adolescence: A longitudinal study. Psychopathology, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1159/000522343. Advance online publication.
Fried, E. I., & Cramer, A. O. J. (2017). Moving forward: Challenges and directions for psychopathological network theory and methodology. Perspectives on Psychological Science : A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 12(6), 999–1020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617705892
Granger, C. W. J. (1969). Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods. Econometrica, 37, 424–438.
Hamaker, E. L., & Wichers, M. (2017). No time like the present: Discovering the hidden dynamics in intensive longitudinal data. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(1), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721416666518
Kaess, M., Brunner, R., & Chanen, A. (2014). Borderline personality disorder in adolescence. Pediatrics, 134(4), 782–793. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-3677
Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., Achenbach, T. M., Althoff, R. R., Bagby, R. M., Brown, T. A., Carpenter, W. T., Caspi, A., Clark, L. A., Eaton, N. R., Forbes, M. K., Forbush, K. T., Goldberg, D., Hasin, D., Hyman, S. E., Ivanova, M. Y., Lynam, D. R., Markon, K., & Zimmerman, M. (2017). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(4), 454–477. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000258
Laceulle, O. M., Rienks, K., Meijer, L., de Moor, E. L., & Karreman, A. (2023). A developmental approach to youth maladaptive personalitytraits: Variable- versus person-centered change in the transition from childhood toadolescence. European Journal of Personality, 37(6), 649–668. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070221130116
Lanfredi, M., Macis, A., Ferrari, C., Meloni, S., Pedrini, L., Ridolfi, M. E., Zonca, V., Cattane, N., Cattaneo, A., & Rossi, R. (2021). Maladaptive behaviours in adolescence and their associations with personality traits, emotion dysregulation and other clinical features in a sample of Italian students: A cross-sectional study. Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation, 8(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-021-00154-w
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press.
Little, R. J. A. (1988). A test of missing completely at random for multivariate data with missing values. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 83, 1198–1202. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1988.10478722
Moselli, M., Casini, M. P., Frattini, C., & Williams, R. (2021). Suicidality and personality pathology in adolescence: A systematic review. Child Psychiatry and Human Development. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01239-x.Advanceonlinepublication.10.1007/s10578-021-01239-x
Peckham, A. D., Jones, P., Snorrason, I., Wessman, I., Beard, C., & Björgvinsson, T. (2020). Age-related differences in borderline personality disorder symptom networks in a transdiagnostic sample. Journal of Affective Disorders, 274, 508–514. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.05.111
Peters, J. R., Crowe, M. L., Morgan, T., Zimmerman, M., Sharp, C., Grilo, C. M., Sanislow, C. A., Shea, M. T., Zanarini, M. C., McGlashan, T. H., Morey, L. C., Skodol, A. E., & Yen, S. (2022). Borderline personality disorder symptom networks across adolescent and adult clinical samples: Examining symptom centrality and replicability. Psychological Medicine, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291721004931. Advance online publication.
Peters, J. R., Smart, L. M., & Baer, R. A. (2015). Dysfunctional responses to emotion mediate the cross-sectional relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features. Journal of Personality Disorders, 29(2), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi_2014_28_151
R Core Team. (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.r-project.org/
Richetin, J., Preti, E., Costantini, G., & De Panfilis, C. (2017). The centrality of affective instability and identity in Borderline Personality Disorder: Evidence from network analysis. PLoS ONE, 12(10), e0186695. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186695
Ringwald, W., Forbes, M., & Wright, A. (2021). Meta-analysis of structural evidence for the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model. Psychological Medicine, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291721001902
Ringwald, W. R., Hallquist, M. N., Dombrovski, A. Y., & Wright, A. G. C. (2022). Personality (Dys)function and general instability. Clinical Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026221083859
Robinaugh, D. J., Millner, A. J., & McNally, R. J. (2016). Identifying highly influential nodes in the complicated grief network. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125(6), 747–757. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000181
Romer, D., Reyna, V. F., & Satterthwaite, T. D. (2017). Beyond stereotypes of adolescent risk taking: Placing the adolescent brain in developmental context. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.07.007
Schmittmann, V. D., Cramer, A. O. J., Waldorp, L. J., Epskamp, S., Kievit, R. A., & Borsboom, D. (2013). Deconstructing the construct: A network perspective on psychological phenomena. New Ideas in Psychology, 31(1), 43–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2011.02.007
Scott, L. N., Stepp, S. D., & Pilkonis, P. A. (2014). Prospective associations between features of borderline personality disorder, emotion dysregulation, and aggression. Personality Disorders, 5(3), 278–288. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000070
See, A. Y., Klimstra, T. A., Cramer, A., & Denissen, J. (2020). The network structure of personality pathology in adolescence with the 100-item personality inventory for DSM-5 Short-Form (PID-5-SF). Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 823. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00823
Selby, E. A., Kranzler, A., Panza, E., & Fehling, K. B. (2016). Bidirectional-compounding effects of rumination and negative emotion in predicting impulsive behavior: Implications for emotional cascades. Journal of Personality, 84(2), 139–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12147
Sharp, C., & Wall, K. (2018). Personality pathology grows up: Adolescence as a sensitive period. Current Opinion in Psychology, 21, 111–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.11.010
Sharp, C., & Wall, K. (2021). DSM-5 level of personality functioning: refocusing personality disorder on what it means to be human. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 17, 313–337. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-081219-105402
Sharp, C., Pane, H., Ha, C., Venta, A., Patel, A. B., Sturek, J., & Fonagy, P. (2011). Theory of mind and emotion regulation difficulties in adolescents with borderline traits. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 50(6), 563-573.e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2011.01.017
Sharp, C., Kalpakci, A., Mellick, W., Venta, A., & Temple, J. R. (2015). First evidence of a prospective relation between avoidance of internal states and borderline personality disorder features in adolescents. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 24(3), 283–290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-014-0574-3
Sharp, C., Wright, A. G., Fowler, J. C., Frueh, B. C., Allen, J. G., Oldham, J., & Clark, L. A. (2015). The structure of personality pathology: Both general ('g’) and specific ('s’) factors? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 124(2), 387–398. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000033
Sharp, C., Vanwoerden, S., & Wall, K. (2018). Adolescence as a sensitive period for the development of personality disorder. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 41(4), 669–683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2018.07.004
Southward, M. W., & Cheavens, J. S. (2018). Identifying core deficits in a dimensional model of Borderline Personality Disorder features: A network analysis. Clinical Psychological Science : A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 6(5), 685–703.
Sowislo, J. F., & Orth, U. (2013). Does low self-esteem predict depression and anxiety? A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 213–240. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028931
Steinberg, L. (2011). Adolescent risk taking: A social neuroscience perspective. In E. Amsel & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Adolescent vulnerabilities and opportunities: Developmental and constructivist perspectives (pp. 41–64). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139042819.005
Stepp, S. D., & Lazarus, S. A. (2017). Identifying a borderline personality disorder prodrome: Implications for community screening. Personality and Mental Health, 11(3), 195–205. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmh.1389
Stepp, S. D., Burke, J. D., Hipwell, A. E., & Loeber, R. (2012). Trajectories of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder symptoms as precursors of borderline personality disorder symptoms in adolescent girls. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 40(1), 7–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9530-6
Stepp, S. D., Lazarus, S. A., & Byrd, A. L. (2016). A systematic review of risk factors prospectively associated with borderline personality disorder: Taking stock and moving forward. Personality Disorders, 7(4), 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000186
Tackett, J. L. (2011). Parent informants for child personality: Agreement, discrepancies, and clinical utility. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93(6), 539–544. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2011.608763
Tackett, J. L., & Sharp, C. (2014). A developmental psychopathology perspective on personality disorder: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Personality Disorders, 28(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi.2014.28.1.1
Tackett, J. L., Balsis, S., Oltmanns, T. F., & Krueger, R. F. (2009). A unifying perspective on personality pathology across the life span: Developmental considerations for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Development and Psychopathology, 21(3), 687–713. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095457940900039X
Verhees, M. W. F. T., Ceulemans, E., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Bosmans, G. (2021). State attachment variability: Between- and within-person level associations with trait attachment and psychological problems. Brain Sciences, 11(10), 1264. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11101264
Watson, D., Levin-Aspenson, H. F., Waszczuk, M. A., Conway, C. C., Dalgleish, T., Dretsch, M. N., Eaton, N. R., Forbes, M. K., Forbush, K. T., Hobbs, K. A., Michelini, G., Nelson, B. D., Sellbom, M., Slade, T., South, S. C., Sunderland, M., Waldman, I., Witthöft, M., Wright, A., Kotov, R., & HiTOP Utility Workgroup. (2022). Validity and utility of Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): III. Emotional dysfunction superspectrum. World psychiatry: Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 21(1), 26–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20943
Woods, W. C., Arizmendi, C., Gates, K. M., Stepp, S. D., Pilkonis, P. A., & Wright, A. G. C. (2020). Personalized models of psychopathology as contextualized dynamic processes: An example from individuals with borderline personality disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 88(3), 240–254. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000472
Zapolski, T. C., & Smith, G. T. (2013). Comparison of parent versus child-report of child impulsivity traits and prediction of outcome variables. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 35(3), 301–313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-013-9349-2
Funding
None.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical Approval
Approved by the institutional review board of Ghent University (No. 2007/21). This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Consent to Participate
Informed consent and assent were obtained from all participants.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Franssens, R., Costantini, G., Kaurin, A. et al. A Longitudinal Network of Borderline-Related Trait Vulnerabilities from Childhood to Adolescence. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 52, 443–455 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01132-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01132-2