Emotional Processing in Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder and with Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract

In the field of mental health, deficiencies in emotional processing have been evidenced in several psychopathologies. This quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design, aimed to investigate the Emotional Processing (Recognition of emotional facial expressions and Emotional Deregulation) in a sample of individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD, n = 13) and with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD, n =20). A Face Recognition Task was developed specifically for this investigation. The task consisted of the presentation of 20 videos, of 5 seconds, with dynamic faces of the emotions Joy, Anger, Fear, Sadness and Neutral Faces. The hypotheses were partially confirmed. Regarding face recognition, in the reaction time, the TPB group showed a longer reaction time for neutral faces with (p=0,014). No statistically significant differences were found regarding accuracy. The results also point out that individualswith BPD have greater Emotional Deregulation, measured by self-report using the Emotional Regulation Difficulty Scale (DERS), than the MDD group. Emotional deregulation in the DERS subscales showed a significant difference between groups pointing to greater Emotional Deregulation of the BPD, in the subscales: Impulses (p = 0.001), Strategies (p = 0.0009) and Clarity (p =0.0005).