Parental mentalizing under stress: an innovative experimental and ecological momentary assessment approach in mothers with Borderline Personality Disorder

Research has amply shown that children of parents with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have a highly increased risk of developing mental disorders. However, the mechanisms involved in the associations between maternal BPD and negative child outcomes are still poorly understood. Impairments in parental mentalizing or the parents’ ability to understand their children’s behaviors in terms of mental states, may be a key factor in this context. Studies of the neural regions underlying mentalizing suggest that high levels of stress, particularly in attachment contexts, typically impair mentalizing, and that the threshold for impairment is lower in individuals with a history of insecure attachment or trauma, which are highly prevalent in individuals with BPD. As mothers with BPD experience high levels of stress regarding parenting, it is hypothesized that parental mentalizing in mothers with BPD is often impaired, and that these impairments are associated with insensitive parenting behaviors. However, very few studies have experimentally investigated the impact of stress on (parental) mentalizing, particularly in mothers with BPD. This project aims to fill this important gap in our knowledge. In two innovative experimental studies and an ecological momentary assessment study, we will investigate the impact of attachment-related stress on parental mentalizing and parenting behaviors in mothers with BPD versus normal control mothers.