Search

Objective: Anorexia nervosa and borderline personality disorder are often associated and share some core elements, including emotional dysregulation and affective instability. Nevertheless, the association of these two conditions in adolescence is still little studied., Method: The present study aims at investigating, through a multidimensional assessment, the psychopathological characteristics of adolescents affected by anorexia nervosa in comorbidity with borderline personality disorder on a sample of 127 female adolescents, through the comparison with adolescents with borderline personality disorders and adolescents with anorexia nervosa. All participants completed a validated psychometric battery assessing alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20), depression (Children's Depression Inventory), psychological symptoms (Symptom Checklist-90-Revised) and psychological symptoms relevant in eating disorders (Eating Disorders Inventory-3)., Results: Adolescents with anorexia nervosa in comorbidity with borderline personality disorder show intermediate features between the two disorders individually in the general psychopathological profile, but a peculiar psychological profile regarding the eating symptomatology, with worse features compared to adolescents with the sole anorexia nervosa., Conclusions: Results suggest a peculiar clinical and psychopatological endophenotype in adolescents with anorexia nervosa in comorbidity with borderline personality disorders, indicating the need to define specific and tailored treatment for this population., (© 2024 Eating Disorders Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objectives: This study aims to test the psychometric proprieties of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ) applied to younger (13-16 years) and older (17-20 years) Italian adolescents examining (1) the factorial structure of RFQ; (2) its invariance across age and sex; (3) correlations between RFQ subscale scores, as well as the associations of the RFQ with (4) psychological problems and alexithymia dimensions., Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 593 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 20 years old recruited from the community within Italy. These participants completed the RFQ, Symptom Checklist-90, and Toronto Alexithymia Scale., Results: The two-factor structure of the RFQ was confirmed. However, higher internal consistency of RFQ was obtained by removing two items that seemed problematic within this sample. Using a six-item version of RFQ, the two-factor structure was invariant across adolescent age and sex. Significant correlations among RFQ subscale scores, and between RFQ subscales with both psychological problems and alexithymia dimensions were found., Conclusions: Preliminary results reveal a short version of RFQ (six-item) is a suitable measure to assess mentalizing in adolescents in the Italian context., (© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)