Borderline personality features are associated with worse perceptions of (but not compliance with) chronic pain treatment

ABSTRACT

Treating chronic illness requires ongoing patient-provider cooperation, but individual differences in patients’ negative perceptions of care can undermine this cooperation. Research suggests people high on borderline personality disorder (BPD) features may react negatively to and comply less with mental health and medical treatment. This might be particularly problematic in chronic pain treatment, where BPD features are over-represented and the dysregulation typifying BPD likely undermines consistent care. In a sample of 147 chronic pain patients, we investigated whether higher levels of BPD features – both in general and by specific facets – predicted worse perceptions of treatment and lower patient-reported compliance with treatment recommendations. Participants higher (vs. lower) on borderline features viewed treatment more negatively but did not report complying less with recommendations. We found evidence that this may reflect the unstable relationships facet of BPD. Our results indicate that, consistent with other treatment settings, BPD features may undermine care for chronic pain. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of collaborative provider-patient relationships and patient agreement with the treatment of chronic pain, particularly among individuals higher on BPD features.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronic pain
• borderline personality disorder
• treatment compliance
• treatment satisfaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

All procedures were in accordance with the standards and approval of the Washington State University IRB (#12361–004) and the hospital that runs the pain clinic (which prefers to remain anonymous).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2023.2268889

Additional information

Funding

Washington State University Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Program (#116803).