A Non-linear Predictive Model of Borderline Personality Disorder Based on Multilayer Perceptron

Borderline Personality Disorder is a serious mental disease, classified in Cluster B of DSM IV-TR personality disorders. People with this syndrome presents an anamnesis of traumatic experiences and shows dissociative symptoms. Since not all subjects who have been victims of trauma develop a Borderline Personality Disorder, the emergence of this serious disease seems to have the fragility of character as a predisposing condition. Infect, numerous studies show that subjects positive for diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder had scores extremely high or extremely low to some temperamental dimensions (harm Avoidance and reward dependence) and character dimensions (cooperativeness and self directedness). In a sample of 602 subjects, who have had consecutive access to an Outpatient Mental Health Service, it was evaluated the presence of Borderline Personality Disorder using the semi-structured interview for the DSM IV-TR personality disorders. In this population we assessed the presence of dissociative symptoms with the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the personality traits with the Temperament and Character Inventory developed by Cloninger. To assess the weight and the predictive value of these psychopathological dimensions in relation to the Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis, a neural network statistical model called “multilayer perceptron,” was implemented. This model was developed with a dichotomous dependent variable, consisting in the presence or absence of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and with five covariates. The first one is the taxonomic subscale of dissociative experience scale, the others are temperamental and characterial traits: Novelty-Seeking, Harm-Avoidance, Self-Directedness and Cooperativeness. The statistical model, that results satisfactory, showed a significance capacity (89%) to predict the presence of borderline personality disorder. Furthermore, the dissociative symptoms seem to have a greater influence than the character traits in the borderline personality disorder e disease. In conclusion, the results seem to indicate that to borderline personality disorder development, contribute both psychic factors, such as temperament and character traits, and environmental factors, such as traumatic events capable of producing dissociative symptoms. These factors interact in a nonlinear way in producing maladaptive behaviors typical of this disorder.