Page 90 - Personality disorders and insecure attachment among adolescents

Table 4. Comparison of the attachment classifications with the total SCL-90 scores at pre-treatment and at post-treatment
Pre SCL-90 Post SCL-90
mean Sd mean Sd Df
AAI improved 233.50 58.71 162.79 49.45 13 AAI unchanged 245.08 66.67 192.00 57.25 11
t p
3.78 .002 3.52 .005
Note. AAI = Adult Attachment Interview
Observational, cross-sectional part of the study
Discussion
The aim here was to compare pre-treatment insecure attachment representations to attachment distribution of norm groups and between BPD and other personality disorders in a sample of adolescent inpatients clinically diagnosed with a personality disorder. First, in comparison to norm groups, our group was characterised by disturbed attachment classifications. Almost half of the group was categorised under the most disturbed category, i.e. the cannot classify category (CC). Second, no differences in attachment classifications were found between personality disorder groups. With regard to dimensional measures, those adolescents who described their fathers in a devaluing way were more likely (OR 1.7) to be diagnosed with BPD. However, due to the small sample size, replication is necessary to establish how generalisable these results are.
It is worth noting that half of adolescents in this high risk sample were categorised under CC at pre-treatment, and, when forced into one of the main attachment categories, were subsequently placed in the preoccupied category. Compared to the norm groups, more preoccupied attachments and especially CC classifications were found in the sample (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2009). This result is quite unique as clinical adolescents in other studies differ from the adult clinical samples by evidencing more dismissive and less preoccupied attachment (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2009). This is usually explained by the fact that adolescents, who are still in the separation-individuation phase, have had less time to work through their childhood attachment experiences (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2009; van IJzendoorn & Bakermans- Kranenburg, 2008). Attempts to gain autonomy may lead to higher proportions of dismissing attachments during this developmental period (Warmuth & Cummings, 2015).The same explanation is
84