[Mentalization based treatment (MBT) for borderline personality disorder among a population of French-speaking patients]. / Implémentation francophone de la thérapie basée sur la mentalisation (TBM) pour le trouble de personnalité limite.

INTRODUCTION: Borderline Personality Disorder is a frequent disorder that is challenging for therapists to treat due to the prevalence of self-damaging and suicidal behaviours and interruptions of the therapeutic alliance, as well as a poor response to psychotropic treatments. In recent years, several empirically-validated psychotherapeutic treatments have been developed, including Mentalisation-Based Therapy, which is an integrative psychodynamic approach created in Britain. Although numerous studies have showed Mentalisation-Based Therapy to be an efficient treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, its specific components have yet to be assessed. Furthermore, there have been no empirical studies conducted among groups of French-speaking patients. The purpose of this study is twofold: To provide an initial assessment of the efficacy of the mentalisation-based psycho-educational component, which is the first component of any mentalisation-based therapy, and to provide the first assessment of this approach among a population of French-speaking patients. METHOD: Over a three-month period, 14 Borderline Personality Disorder sufferers followed a psycho-educational Mentalisation-Based Therapy programme consisting of group sessions to introduce patients to mentalisation and weekly individual interviews. Patients filled in various question forms assessing, among others, the intensity of their depression, their degree of hopelessness, their emotional regulation strategies, and their reflective abilities. RESULTS: The psycho-educational component of Mentalisation-Based Therapy is significantly associated with improved cognitive emotional regulation, empathy and reflective abilities, and with a reduced sense of hopelessness. The programme retention rate was of 71.4%. CONCLUSION: Despite the small sample size and the short treatment period, these preliminary results demonstrate the efficiency of the psycho-educational phase of Mentalisation-Based Therapy, and in particular the positive effects of the treatment on depressive symptomatology and self-regulation processes among patients with a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis.

Increased methylation of glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) in adults with a history of childhood maltreatment: a link with the severity and type of trauma.

Childhood maltreatment, through epigenetic modification of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1), influences the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). We investigated whether childhood maltreatment and its severity were associated with increased methylation of the exon 1(F) NR3C1 promoter, in 101 borderline personality disorder (BPD) and 99 major depressive disorder (MDD) subjects with, respectively, a high and low rate of childhood maltreatment, and 15 MDD subjects with comorbid post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Childhood sexual abuse, its severity and the number of type of maltreatments positively correlated with NR3C1 methylation (P=6.16 × 10(-8), 5.18 × 10(-7) and 1.25 × 10(-9), respectively). In BPD, repetition of abuses and sexual abuse with penetration correlated with a higher methylation percentage. Peripheral blood might therefore serve as a proxy for environmental effects on epigenetic processes. These findings suggest that early life events may permanently impact on the HPA axis though epigenetic modifications of the NR3C1. This is a mechanism by which childhood maltreatment may lead to adulthood psychopathology.