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. 2004 Aug;13(3):53-7.

Construct validity of the adolescent borderline personality disorder: a review

Helen Bondurant  1 , Brian Greenfield, Sze Man Tse
Affiliations

Construct validity of the adolescent borderline personality disorder: a review

Helen Bondurant et al. Can Child Adolesc Psychiatr Rev. 2004 Aug.

Abstract
in English, French

Introduction: Although the term borderline personality disorder (BPD) is used to describe adolescents in clinical settings, there is confusion as to what it comprises. To further elucidate that diagnosis, this article reviews its construct validity.

Method: Relevant publications appearing in PsychInfo (1872 to present) were reviewed for the purposes of this article.

Results: Thirty-six of the approximately sixty-five publications selected for consideration were included in this review.

Conclusion: The construct validity of adolescent BPD is supported by internal consistency (comparable to that of adults), group differences (ie this diagnosis segregates BPD from non-BPD adolescents), convergent validity (ie multiple measures of this disorder measure the same pathology) and concurrent validity, whereby these youth manifest functional impairment and distress. By contrast, the adolescent BPD criteria manifest less construct validity than the adult diagnosis in that its criteria did not uniformly predict the overall diagnosis, and showed more criterion overlap with other personality disorders and a broader pattern of axis II comorbidity. Further diminishing its construct validity, factor analysis suggested that adolescent BPD was not a single entity, and its low predictive validity was demonstrated by little diagnostic stability through adolescence into adulthood.

Introduction: Même si le terme de personnalité borderline est utilisé en pratique dans la description de certains adolescents, celui-ci porte à confusion. Pour mieux préciser ce qu’il veut dire, nous allons revoir la validité du construit de celui-ci.

Méthodologie: Nous avons utilisé la moitié des 65 publications retrouvées lors de la recherche de la littérature sur le sujet.

Conclusions: La validité du construit du diagnostic de personnalité borderline à l’adolescence est basée sur la consistance interne (comparable à celle que l’on trouve chez l’adulte), les différences entre groupes (i.e. que ce diagnostic permet de séparer les adolescents borderline des non-borderline), la validité convergente (i.e. qu’il existe plusieurs façons de mesurer cette pathologie) et la validité concourante qui démontre que ces adolescents présentent une certaine détresse et un handicap fonctionnel. Par contre, les critères diagnostiques de personnalité borderline à l’adolescente on une validité de construit moins fiable que chez l’adulte en ce sens qu’íls sont moins en mesure de prédire de façon uniforme l’existence de cette pathologie et que les critères s’imbriquent avec ceux des autres troubles de la personnalité et autres troubles comorbides en axe II. L’analyse factorielle réduit encore la validité du construit de la personnalité borderline à l’adolescence en démontrant que ce type de personnalité ne représente pas une entité unique; le fait que la stabilité du diagnostic durant cette période allant du début de l’adolescence au début de la période adulte soit faible démontre que la validité critérielle du diagnostic est incertaine.

Keywords: adolescent; borderline personality disorder; construct; review; validity.

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