Adolescence is a period in everybody's life that is usually referred to as "time that everybody must go through" or "parents' hell". Transition between childhood and adulthood is indeed of great importance in everybody's life, but it is usually accompanied with a variety of questions, problems, dilemmas and a constant need to…

Victimisation is a traumatic experience linked to development of Borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, there is limited research investigating the developmental journey prior to BPD diagnosis. School environments offer an opportunity for BPD prevention and early intervention. A survey with 19 Australian family carers of people with BPD…

The maladaptive personality and neuropsychological features of highly relationally aggressive females were examined in a group of 30 grade 6, 7, and 8 girls and group-matched controls. Employing a multistage cluster sampling procedure, a group of highly, yet almost exclusively, relationally aggressive females were identified and matched on a…

This study tested if children and adolescents with high levels of borderline personality features (BPF) exhibit the same shame-prone self-concept previously found to characterize adults with borderline personality disorder (Rusch et al., 2007). Self-concept was indexed using the Implicit Association Test, in a community sample of…

This longitudinal investigation assessed whether cognitive schemas of justification of violence, mistrust, and narcissism predicted social information processing (SIP), and SIP in turn predicted aggressive behavior in adolescents. A total of 650 adolescents completed measures of cognitive schemas at Time 1, SIP in ambiguous social scenarios at…

Research of psychological distress (PD) needs to differentiate between anxiety/depression and hostility/suspiciousness, which are associated with different motivational systems. In this study, structural equation modeling was used to test two hypothesized models for the prediction of each facet of PD. Hypotheses were proposed about the effects of…

Externalising behaviours such as substance misuse (SM) and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms highly co-ocurr in adolescence. While disinhibited personality traits have been consistently linked to externalising behaviours there is evidence that these traits may relate differentially to SM and CD. The current study aimed to assess whether this was the…

Objective: Dysfunctions in both emotion regulation and social cognition (understanding behavior in mental state terms, theory of mind or mentalizing) have been proposed as explanations for disturbances of interpersonal behavior in borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study aimed to examine mentalizing in adolescents with emerging BPD from a…

Personality traits may be viable candidates for mediators of the relationship between genetic risk and ADHD. Participants were 578 children (331 boys; 320 children with ADHD) between the ages of six and 18. Parents and teachers completed a comprehensive, multi-stage diagnostic procedure to assess ADHD and comorbid disorders. Mother completed the…

The aims of this study were to investigate the rates of deliberate self-harm (DSH) behavior among an Italian adolescent sample, as well as to explore its clinical correlates. On a sample of 234 adolescents in Italian secondary schools (Mean age = 16.47; SD = 1.7) were assessed the DSH as well as externalizing symptoms (including both conduct…

The aim of this paper was to investigate the feasibility and impact of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) in a clinical outpatient setting. Eighteen clinicians were trained and supervised in using DBT. Twenty-seven female patients were assessed on a number of variables before the treatment,…

This retrospective chart review study of 227 participants examined the psychiatric profiles of outpatient adolescents ages 12 to 19 years (M = 15.08 years, SD = 1.72 years) engaging in different types of deliberate self-harm (DSH) behaviors. Participants were divided into four groups: no deliberate self-harm (NoDSH; n = 119), nonsuicidal…

This report reviews research on personality disorders (PDs) in adolescents, focusing on the prevalence of certain PDs by gender and the impact of gender on diagnosis. Empirical findings are presented pertaining to PD gender differences in adults for comparison and conclude that most DSM-III-R defined PDs are unrelated to gender. (Author)

This paper is an outpatient replication of Apsche, Bass, Jennings and Siv (2005) work which examined the effectiveness of Mode Deactivation Therapy (MDT) on adolescent conduct disordered males in an inpatient therapeutic setting. This research compared the effectiveness of MDT and Treatment as Usual (TAU) as treatments on adolescents with conduct…