<b>Emotional awareness in adolescents with a borderline personality disorder: impact of defense mechanisms and adversity</b>Dataset and code

In Borderline Personality Disorders (BPD), literature data about emotion awareness in the process of mentalization revealed some discrepancies between some patients who are accurate in detecting emotional cues and others who are impaired at identifying them in themselves and others. Even if links between childhood adversity and mentalization have been established, there is a need to understand the mechanisms underlying this association. The objectives of this study were to compare the emotional awareness of adolescents with BPD with healthy controls, and to investigate the influence of adversity (maltreatment and parental bonding), as well as defense mechanisms on emotional awareness in the two groups, using the Level of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). The study participants included adolescents with BPD (n = 41) and healthy controls (HC, n = 67). No difference was observed in the emotional awareness of adolescents with BPD and HC, but multivariate regression analyses revealed links between levels of emotional awareness and adversity. Low levels of self emotion awareness were associated with maltreatment and with maternal control, while high levels of emotional awareness were linked to low levels of maternal care. Furthermore, immature defense mechanisms were associated with higher levels of emotional awareness, but only in the BPD group, suggesting that defense mechanisms have a key role in maintaining emotional awareness in the context of adversity.