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Biomedical subjects

K M O'Leary

Publications and source records attributed to K M O'Leary.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Borderline personality disorder. Neuropsychological testing results.

Earlier clinical hypotheses regarding borderline personality disorder, based on projective psychological testing and intelligence tests, are examined. Recent findings of comparative deficits in this population in the domains of verbal and visual memory as well as visual perception are reviewed, together with clinical relevance. Efforts to examine the way individuals with this disorder process emotion-laden material are discussed, with suggestions for further research.

Affect↗
PubMed1991

Self-ratings of anger and hostility in borderline personality disorder.

Forty-six patients with borderline personality disorder with and without major depression and 27 normal volunteers completed the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory, a self-rating scale of anger and hostility. The patients with borderline personality had significantly higher scores than the normal volunteers. The scores of the patients with borderline personality disorders were not related to gender, treatment or research setting, the degree of acute distress, or the presence of major depression. These findings suggest that a proneness to anger and hostility are enduring characteristics of borderline personality disorder and that anger and depression may represent independent clinical conditions with independent biological mechanisms regulating these two affective states.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Neuropsychological testing of patients with borderline personality disorder.

OBJECTIVE AND METHOD: This study examined whether a battery of neuropsychological tests could detect cognitive deficits--particularly in the areas of perception, learning, and memory--in patients with borderline personality disorder. The test battery was completed by 16 research outpatients with borderline personality disorder, typified by behavioral dyscontrol and diagnosed according to DSM-III-R criteria and the Diagnostic Interview for Borderline Patients. A comparison group of 16 normal volunteers also completed the test battery. RESULTS: The performance of the borderline patients was significantly impaired in comparison with that of the normal group on memory tests requiring uncued recall of complex, recently learned material. Cues given on an auditory memory task partially corrected that deficit. The patients' performance was also significantly impaired on several visual perceptual tests. These deficits do not appear to have been attributable to attentional problems, psychomotor impairment, current major depression, or history of alcohol abuse. CONCLUSIONS: The observed difficulties in separating essential from extraneous visual information and in recalling complex material may be relevant in understanding some of the clinical features of borderline personality disorder. The observed memory improvement resulting from cueing suggests specific strategies that may be used to aid patients' recall of complex material.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Mood variability: a study of four groups.

OBJECTIVE: The authors' goal was to determine whether self-rated patterns of mood regulation differed among patients with major depression, patients with borderline personality disorder, patients with premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and normal subjects. METHOD: Fourteen days of morning and evening mood self-ratings on a visual analog scale were analyzed for 65 female subjects (10 with major depression, 16 with borderline personality disorder, 15 with PMS, and 24 without psychiatric diagnoses). For each individual, the mean and standard deviation of morning and evening ratings, the mean absolute change in mood from one day to the next, and the change from morning to evening were determined. RESULTS: The four groups differed significantly on every measure of mood and mood variability except diurnal variation. As expected, the group with major depression had the lowest global ratings and a low degree of variability. The group with borderline personality disorder was less depressed than the group with major depression and showed a high degree of mood variability. Autocorrelation analysis suggested that mood ratings in borderline personality disorder vary randomly from one day to the next. The mood variability over the 14 days of the patients with PMS was significantly greater than that of normal subjects. CONCLUSIONS: The visual analog scale can capture patterns of mood and mood variability thought to be typical of these diagnostic groups. Mood disorders differ not only in the degree of abnormal mood but also in the pattern of mood variability, suggesting that mechanisms regulating mood stability may differ from those regulating overall mood state.

Adolescent↗