The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Analytic Therapy on Impulsivity and Dissociative Experiences of Borderline Personality Disordered Patients

Impulsivity is known as one of  the underlying and predictive factor in psychopathology  that considered as the most enduring features of borderline personality disorder. Also, dissociative experiences are the most prominent components of this disorder. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-analytical therapy (CAT) on impulsivity and dissociative experiences in patients with borderline personality disorder. This study was a semi-experimental research conducted in the form of pretest-posttest and follow-up with control group. The sample of this study included 20 male with borderline personality disorder in the prison of Semnan who were selected by an experienced psychiatrist based on the Structured Clinical Interview and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III). Participants were included randomly in two experimental groups (n=10) and one control group (n=10) and completed the Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS-II) and the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) in pretest, posttest and follow-up.   The experimental group received the cognitive-analytical therapy (CAT) for sixteen 120-minute sessions twice a week. Data were analyzed by mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA). The findings of this study showed that cognitive-analytic therapy (CAT) after 5 and 10 sessions had no significant effects on decreasing impulsivity and dissociative experiences of the experimental group compared to the control group, but after 16 sessions of intervention and one month follow-up, a significant effect on reduction of this symptoms was observed. The results of the current study showed that cognitive-analytic therapy was an effective strategy to improve the symptoms of impulsivity and dissociative experiences inborderline personality and can be used as an effective therapeutic approach.