New Diagnostic Tools to Predict Symptom Improvements in Personality Disorders

Each month The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation hosts a Meet the Scientist Webinar featuring a researcher discussing the latest findings related to mental illness. In September, 2024, the Foundation featured Dr. Jenna M. Traynor of McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School.


Description: Although several types of psychological interventions are available to treat people with personality disorders, we have a poor understanding of which people are best suited to which treatments. Part of this difficulty stems from well-documented problems in symptom measurement, which has historically led to the collection of unreliable diagnostic data with poor predictive utility. Recently, new diagnostic tools have been created that measure personality functioning in a new way: rather than placing individuals into different diagnostic categories (e.g., "narcissistic personality disorder" or "borderline personality disorder"), new diagnostic tools provide more precise information about the severity of symptoms in domains that tend to be shared across personality disorder categories, such as difficulties developing a strong sense of self and feeling safe in close relationships. This presentation offers an overview of research that combines new diagnostic tools with functional MRI to identify clinical characteristics and brain-based markers that may be associated with symptom improvements, including in suicidal thinking, during a brief, structured hospital intervention. Among all people who experience suicidal thoughts, this approach could pinpoint those who will improve during a brief intervention and those who may require different treatments to recover.

Learn more at https://bbrfoundation.org/event/new-d...

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