A Developmental Biospecial Model of Borderline Personality Disorder

The extended developmental model is developed to describe a complex, heterotypic trajectory from childhood vulnerabilities to adult BPD. This model pointed out the significant role of trait impulsivity in the interaction with family-level risk factors which might contribute to the escalation of the risk of the development of BPD. In addition, it explains that self-inflicted injurious behaviors and other features of self-destructive behaviors in adolescence can be considered a reliable predictor for later BPD in adulthood. This model emphasizes the reciprocal transaction between predisposing biological vulnerabilities and invalidating environment and environmental risk factors that contribute to the development of BPD among high-risk individuals and mentions that impulsive and emotionally sensitive children and adolescents are prone to be faced with a series of maltreatment in the context of invalidating environment, especially by their parents such as inappropriate punishment, and high level of aggressive interactions, because these children and adolescents have numerous difficulties in inhibiting extremely intense emotions. The developmental biosocial model hypothesizes that impaired impulse control likely appears in the development of borderline pathology, severe emotional instability features of BPD are developed and maintained by the caregiving environment and are based on characteristics of the child and the developmental context, and also reciprocal reinforcement interactions between biological predispositions and environmental risk processes endorse emotion dysregulation and more severe behavioral control issues and therefore lead to negative cognitive and social consequences.