Impairments in Object Relations and Chronicity of Suicidal Behavior in Individuals With Borderline Personality Disorder.

ABSTRACT

While studies have demonstrated connections between impairments in object relations and self-destructive behaviors in individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD), few have investigated whether these impairments relate to actual suicidal behaviors. The current study utilized the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global Method to investigate object relational functioning and suicidal behaviors in 131 residential treatment patients. Cognitive but not affective aspects of internalized representations predicted past suicidal behavior in BPD subjects; no relationships were found between quality of object representations and suicide in other-PD subjects. Implications of these findings for research, theory, and treatment of suicidal individuals are discussed.