Neurological soft signs correlation with symptom severity in borderline personality disorder

Abstract

Abstract Background Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with multiple psychopathological domains; so studying the correlation of clinical or behavioral data with underlying structural and functional neurological findings in BPD is the focus of interest in recent years. The aim of our study was to compare the presence of neurological soft signs (NSS) in patients with borderline personality disorder with their presence in normal controls, and to correlate the severity of different symptoms of BPD with the presence of NSS through a case-control study which was conducted on 30 patients and 30 matching controls recruited from Al Kasr Al Ainy Hospital, Cairo University, Egypt. All subjects were assessed by the Borderline Personality Questionnaire, the Barratt Impulsivity Scale-11, the Brief Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Assessment tool, and the Cambridge Neurological Inventory. Results The BPD group had significantly higher total NSS scores, primitive reflexes subscale score, and sensory integration subscale scores. There was also a positive correlation between NSS and overall severity of borderline symptoms. Conclusions The increased rates of NSS were associated with specific clinical symptoms in BPD including suicidality, self-harm, emptiness, and quasi-psychosis. Impulsivity was found to have the highest correlation with NSS.

Keywords

• Borderline personality disorder
• Neurological soft signs
• Impulsivity
• Suicidality
• Self-harm