Adding EMDR for PTSD at the onset of treatment of borderline personality disorder: A pilot study.

Background And Objectives: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is an effective treatment for individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, EMDR is not typically offered to people with PTSD who also meet the criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study examines the feasibility and clinical benefits of EMDR for PTSD delivered in addition to the onset of treatment as usual (TAU) for BPD.

A masked negative self-esteem? Implicit and explicit self-esteem in patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The mask model of narcissism states that the narcissistic traits of patients with NPD are the result of a compensatory reaction to underlying ego fragility. This model assumes that high explicit self-esteem masks low implicit self-esteem. However, research on narcissism has predominantly focused on non-clinical participants and data derived from patients diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) remain scarce.

Anhedonia in borderline personality disorder and its relation to symptoms of impulsivity.

Background: Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) report strong negative affect and show impulsive, disruptive behaviors. The role of anhedonia, or the inability to experience positive affect, has been less examined in BPD. The present study examined the role of anhedonia in BPD patients and its relation to symptoms of impulsivity.

Disturbed emotion recognition in patients with narcissistic personality disorder.

Although theoretically the lack of empathy is a supposed key symptom of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), empirical studies examining empathy in NPD are scarce. In the present study it was examined whether patients with NPD differ from healthy controls and a psychiatric control group in their empathic abilities. In order to examine this question, 20 patients with NPD, 20 patients with a personality disorder in the Cluster C spectrum and 20 healthy control participants were presented with a questionnaire and a facial recognition task designed to measure empathic abilities.

Altered emotional information processing in borderline personality disorder: an electrophysiological study.

Emotional dysregulation is one of the key symptoms of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). In the present study it is hypothesized that borderline patients display a cortical hyper-responsivity to emotional stimuli compared with a healthy control group. Further, we aimed to examine whether BPD patients were able to suppress stimuli with negative emotional valence as well as healthy control participants could.

Cue exposure therapy for the treatment of opiate addiction: results of a randomized controlled clinical trial.

Background: Persistent cue reactivity to drug-related stimuli is a well-known phenomenon among abstinent drug users and has been found to be a predictor of relapse. Cue exposure therapy (CET) aims to reduce this cue reactivity by exposing abstinent drug users to conditioned drug-related stimuli while preventing their habitual response, i.e.

Attentional bias predicts heroin relapse following treatment.

Aims: Previous studies have shown that abstinent heroin addicts exhibit an attentional bias to heroin-related stimuli. It has been suggested that attentional bias may represent a vulnerability to relapse into drug use. In the present study, the predictive value of pre-treatment attentional bias on relapse was examined in a population of abstinent heroin addicts.

The relation between social desirability and different measures of heroin craving.

A low association between self-reported craving and physiological measures of craving is often found. Social desirability might influence this relation between subjective and physiological reactivity. Subjects were seventy-six in-patient abstinent heroin abusers.