W-8 Personality Disorders and Childhood Trauma

Post #2 by Olber Lacosta- Personality Disorders and Childhood Trauma

The foundation for health and development depends on early life experiences. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are various types of emotional/physical abuse/neglect, and family dysfunction, adversities that children undergo in their home environment. A lot of research has been conducted on ACEs, but one fact that I found outstanding in these studies is that; there is a strong relationship between early childhood adversities and poor results later in life (Cattane et al., 2017). This fact outstands because it shows how the long-term effects of ACEs significantly determines an individual's health and social well-being. Children experiencing high ACE scores are likely to develop chronic health problems, substance use problems, and mental illness problems in their adulthood. However, those with positive experiences such as nurturing and responsive caregiving and safe environments are linked to happy, healthy, and productive lives throughout adulthood. In addition, researchers assert that ACEs prevention is significant because it helps reduce cases of heart disease and depression. ACEs among the minority racial groups are at greater risk, causing economic and social costs to families and communities annually.

The ACEs assessment tool is a ten-item questionnaire designed to predict health outcomes based on the frequencies of answers to questions. This assessment instrument measures the severity of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. In psychiatric mental health care, ACEs instrument is essential because it helps school counselors to get a logic of the condition within a populace without precisely finding individual status. Therefore, the data collected can be used to measure present trauma level and various strategies to address it. In addition, Healthcare settings offer a unique opportunity to enable patients and their families to understand the effect of ACEs assessment instruments on health and prevent and treat toxic stress (Jones et al., 2020). Consequently, ACEs assessment tools help prevent illness and promote health, help to establish a more potent therapeutic relationship between the clinicians and patients, and enhance decision-making in clinical settings, thus treating hard-to-treat and challenging health conditions.

Various barriers to responding to ACEs research are as follows. First, the physicians lack education on helpful parenting practices, and they are also uncomfortable in asking about ACEs; hence, hindering research. Another barrier involves parent hesitancy to converse on family social-emotional risk factors that exist. More so, system barriers hinder the research due to the lack of effective tools that evaluate risk factors of the families. There are no tools that train or help families to establish healthy child-parent relationships. Other barriers include lack of screening time, inadequate reimbursement screening, and lack of local resources and care coordination services.

Several interventions can be applied to treat Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). One of the best options is Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is a psychotherapeutic approach that helps BPD patients to implement positive coping skills and achieve a good life-quality (Paris, 2010). Also, CBT changes the BPD patients by assisting them to lessen their signs by altering what they think or understand circumstances and their daily actions. One type of CBT technique explicitly designed to treat a person with BPD is Schema-Focused Therapy. Schema-focused therapy is founded on the concept that BPD disorder is caused by maladaptive thoughts and actions in early life that make people develop unhealthy coping skills. Besides, it is worth noting that if CBT is not effective in treating BPD, SSRIs recommended medication such as Prozac (Fluoxetine), can be used alongside psychotherapy as an approach to manage the disorder.

 

References

Cattane, N., Rossi, R., Lanfredi, M., & Cattaneo, A. (2017). Borderline personality disorder and childhood trauma: exploring the affected biological systems and mechanisms. BMC psychiatry, 17(1), 1-14.

Jones, C. M., Merrick, M. T., & Houry, D. E. (2020). Identifying and preventing adverse childhood experiences: implications for clinical practice. Jama, 323(1), 25-26.

Paris, J. (2010). Effectiveness of different psychotherapy approaches in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. Current psychiatry reports, 12(1), 56-60.