Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

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Thesis (UNI Access Only)

Abstract

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental illness that affects interpersonal relationships and impacts 1.6% to 5.9% of the United States population (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Yet, important questions about how the disorder develops remain unanswered. The development of BPD could be partially attributed to relationship factors such as attachment styles since insecure attachment styles have been shown to be prevalent among individuals with BPD. However, the processes and pathways for this association have not been widely explored. One possible explanation for this link could be disrupted sleep since sleep disruptions are widely prevalent in those with both insecure attachment and BPD. The current study recruited 279 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Each participant completed an online questionnaire with several measures assessing attachment, sleep, and borderline personality symptoms. Overall results suggest that sleep has a robust mediational association with insecure attachment and borderline personality symptoms, with 23 of 30 mediation models being significant. These findings shed light on the mechanistic pathways between attachment, borderline personality symptoms, and the development of BPD. The implications of these findings also indicate that sleep plays an important role in the development of borderline personality symptoms, and therefore, clinicians should target sleep patterns and habits as part of the treatment of those with borderline personality symptoms.

Keywords: Borderline Personality Disorder, Attachment Styles, Sleep Problems

Year of Submission

2021

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Psychology

First Advisor

Dilbur Arsiwalla, Chair, Thesis Committee

Date Original

12-2021

Object Description

1 PDF file (xii, 162 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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