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Mental health professionals’ attitudes towards patients with borderline personality disorder: The role of disgust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

C. Papathanasiou  and
S. Stylianidis
C. Papathanasiou*
Affiliation:
Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Psychology, Athens, Greece
S. Stylianidis
Affiliation:
Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Psychology, Athens, Greece
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

Mental health professionals’ derogatory attitudes towards patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may negatively affect treatment outcomes.

Objectives

We aimed to identify a) negative attitudes exhibited by mental health professionals towards BPD patients and b) the effects of disgust propensity and disgust sensitivity on theses negative attitudes.

Methods

Mental health professionals (N = 136) completed questionnaires on attitudes towards BPD patients, disgust propensity/sensitivity, and sociodemographic variables.

Results

Significant differences in negative attitudes toward BPD patients based on gender, marital status, occupational subgroup, educational level, psychotherapy training, level of exposure to BPD patients, and political ideology were found. Results suggested BPD patients are viewed by mental health professionals as ineffective, incomprehensible, dangerous, unworthy, immoral, undesirable to be with, and dissimilar to the mental health professionals. Moreover, disgust propensity and the pathogen component of disgust sensitivity were associated with stronger negative attitudes towards BPD patients.

Conclusions

The findings emphasize the importance of mental health professionals’ awareness of the emotion of disgust as a relevant factor to their negative attitudes towards BPD patients.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Keywords

borderline personality disordermental health professionalsdisgustattitudes
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 65 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 30th European Congress of Psychiatry , June 2022 , pp. S373
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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