Anna Auckenthaler

Emotion identification and tension in female patients with borderline personality disorder

OBJECTIVES This study investigates the identification of emotions in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), when compared with mentally healthy control subjects. The inability to identify different emotions is considered as an essential component of affect dysregulation in BPD that has rarely been empirically investigated. METHODS In this study, 30 female borderline patients and 28 healthy control participants received a handheld-PC for a 24-hour period that reminded them hourly to enter data. RESULTS When compared with the control group, patients showed pronounced difficulties in emotion identification. Moreover, the data revealed a significant relationship between difficulties in identifying emotions and levels of aversive inner tension for BPD patients, but not for control subjects. CONCLUSIONS Results indicate that the inability to identify different emotions is a problem that characterizes borderline patients in real-life situations. Treatment programs should, therefore, focus on the improvement of emotion identification and regulation.

Development and Psychometric Characteristics of the Dissociation Tension Scale

The newly developed Dissoziations-Spannungs-Skala (Dissociation Tension Scale; DSS) is a self-rating instrument for the assessment of psychological and somatoform dissociative features (ranging from normal up to pathological) as well as aversive inner tension occurring within the past 7 days. The DSS contains 21 items assessing dissociative symptoms and 1 additional item assessing aversive inner tension. Ratings are made on a time-oriented scale ranging from 0% (never) to 100% (constantly). We measured the psychometric qualities of the DSS in a total of 294 patients and healthy controls. Internal consistency of the DSS was high (Cronbachs α = .92; Gutmanns split-half r = .92). We found good support for convergent, discriminant, and differential validity. There was clear evidence for the DSS being a sensitive instrument for the assessment of changing symptomatology. Assessment of dissociation and other psychopathological features over the same period of time are now possible.

Konzeptionen von „transkultureller Kompetenz“ und ihre Relevanz für die psychiatrisch-psychotherapeutische Versorgung. Ergebnisse eines disziplinübergreifenden Literaturreviews

The concept of transcultural competence is increasingly discussed in Germany as a requirement for providing adequate psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care for persons with a migration background. To this day, understanding of this concept is heterogeneous. This overview aims at systemizing existing definitions of transcultural competence in psychology, medicine and related fields to improve understanding of the term in practice. 130 German and English language scientific papers were analyzed and were evaluated qualitatively with grounded theory method. The analysis produced 3 approaches: a technological approach, a component approach and a positioning-and-attitude approach. The suggested categorization of the understandings of the term transcultural competence allows for a detailed overview of the current definitions of this term and thus provides criteria for a better evaluation of implemented transcultural competence in fields of psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care.