Emotion Recognition Training in Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by emotional instability and unstable interpersonal relations. Critical to social functioning is being able to identify emotions in others. It has been argued that BPD patients show enhanced sensitivity towards negative emotions and suffer from a negative interpretation bias in ambiguous facial expression. Research into the modification of biases in emotion recognition was successfully applied in high-risk youth and showed a change in perception. In this study, the Emotion Recognition Training is applied in BPD patients (n = 33) to investigate if patients can be encouraged to choose happiness over anger in ambiguous facial expressions. This study provides evidence that the emotion recognition training is a new method to successful shift the categorisation of ambiguous facial expression towards more positive interpretation in BPD patients. In addition, results are supported by performance on an independent emotion recognition task (ERT). The training could be a feasible and cost-effective solution for patients to learn better emotion recognition skills that could enhance therapy efficacy. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.