Date of Award
7-23-2024
Publication Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Psychology
Supervisor
Antonio Pascual-Leone
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Objective: The present study examined whether the emotions that clients experience within session are associated with treatment outcome in dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Method: Participants were 52 adults (75% female; mean age 27.7) who met criteria for BPD and were enrolled in a 12-month DBT treatment. The Classification of Affective-Meaning States (Pascual-Leone & Greenberg, 2005), an observer-rated measure of experienced emotion, was used to code video recordings of individual DBT sessions for participants’ emotion. Raters coded three psychotherapy sessions for each participant: one session from each of the early, working, and late phases of psychotherapy. Self-report measures of BPD symptoms were used to assess treatment outcome. Results: More emotional experience overall during the early phase predicted fewer BPD symptoms at 12-month treatment outcome, explaining 19% of the variance in symptoms. However, increases across treatment in global distress predicted higher levels of BPD (24% of the variance explained) and depression symptoms (15% of variance explained) at termination. Early increases in emotional flexibility predicted fewer depressive symptoms at termination (14% of variance explained). Self-compassion coded during the working phase also predicted better treatment outcome (explaining 19% to 34% of variance). Conclusions: Clients’ in-session emotional experiences predict treatment outcome 8 to 10 months later. Clients with BPD may benefit from more overall exploration of their emotional experiences early in DBT, as well as expression of self-compassion. Increases in non-specific, intense negative affect anticipates poor prognosis, whereas increases in emotional flexibility during early treatment anticipates better prognosis.
Recommended Citation
Nardone, Stephanie, "Emotion Predicts Treatment Outcome in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: An Observational Study of Client Process" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 9405.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/9405