Impact of medication side effects on medication adherence and implications for treatment outcomes in patients with borderline personality disorder: a pilot study
Abstract
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe mental illness characterized by unstable interpersonal relationships, affective instability, and impulsivity. While psychotherapy is the recommended first-line treatment, over 80% of BPD patients use psychotropic medication and often report side effects. This pilot study examines whether perceived medication side effects influence treatment outcomes in BPD, anxiety, and depression symptoms indirectly through their effect on medication adherence, with adherence conceptualized as a potential mediator of this relationship. This retrospective study included patients from the personality disorder unit at University Hospital Eggenburg. BPD diagnoses were confirmed using the Borderline Symptom List (BSL-23). Perceived side effects and medication adherence were assessed via self-report questionnaires at admission. Three mediation analyses examined the association between side effects and treatment outcomes (using the BSL-23, PHQ-9, and GAD-7 for BPD, depression, and anxiety symptoms, respectively), with adherence as a mediator and gender and baseline symptom severity as covariates. 84% of patients (n = 48) reported side effects, most commonly depression, fatigue, dizziness, and tremor. The leading cause of nonadherence was forgetting to take medication. The mediation analyses showed no indirect effect of X on Y via M (n = 31; BPD: indirect effect = 0.0011, 95% CI = [-0.0209, 0.0169], anxiety: indirect effect = 0.0038, 95% CI =…
Read the paper
Related studies
- The neurocircuitry of addiction: an overview
- Gender Differences in Human Brain: A Review
- Stratified medicine for mental disorders
- The neurobiology of drug addiction: cross-species insights into the dysfunction and recovery of the prefrontal cortex
- Annual Research Review: DNA methylation as a mediator in the association between risk exposure and child and adolescent psychopathology
- Schizophrenia: The new etiological synthesis
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.