The Facilitating Role of Borderline Personality Disorder and the Inhibiting Role of Mindfulness in Adolescents’ Tendency to Addiction

The tendency to addiction appears more in adolescence and early adulthood than any other stages of a human life. The study of variables affecting addiction have always been of interest to researchers. This study aims to investigate the relationship between borderline personality disorder as a facilitating and mindfulness as an inhibiting factor in adolescents’ tendency to addiction. The study employed a correlation method. A group of 579 first year undergraduate students of Arak University in 2016 were selected using purposeful sampling method. The participants were asked to answer a demographic questionnaire, Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Borderline Personality Part of Schizotypal Personality Scale, and the Iranian Addiction Potential Scale. The Data were analyzed using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient and the stepwise multiple regression. The results of the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient indicated significant (p<0.05) correlation between the borderline personality and mindfulness, and the tendency to addiction. The results of the multiple regression also indicated that the borderline personality and mindfulness explain 30% of the passive addiction potential variance to gather (R2 =0.30, p< 0.01), and the borderline personality alone explains 23% of the active addiction potential variance (R2 =0.23, p<0.01) and 31% (R2 =0.31, p<0.01) of the total variance of tendency to addiction, but the role of mindfulness active addiction potential was not significant (p>0.05). In sum, the results indicated that the borderline personality disorder and mindfulness symptoms together could significantly predict the tendency to addiction in adolescents. However, the borderline personality has more contribution than mindfulness.