Treatment of Automatic Negative Thoughts and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) Behavior in Borderline Personality Disorder Adolescents: Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Background: About 17 to 80% of borderline personality disorder (BPD) patients suffer repeated NSSI (most frequently, cutting/burning self-injury), while 46 to 92% of BPD patients attempt suicide. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the condensed dialectic behavior in reducing automatic negative thoughts and its positive effects on non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behavior in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Methods: A semi-experimental study with pre-and post-tests is going on with both an experimental group and a control group. In 2019, twenty-two BPD adolescents who attended the treatment clinic) Masire Sabz), district 8, Tehran, were divided into two groups. Two questionnaires of automatic negative thoughts and non-suicidal suicide self-injury were administered before and after the intervention. This study employed SPSS 23 with Levene's test, as well as ANOVA to analyze the data. During the intervention group, twelve 90-minute sessions took place with participants in the intervention group, which followed a protocol adapted from a standard DBT protocol for BD participants in the control group waited for a treatment appointment. Results: The results showed that the scores of the intervention group significantly decreased in the Automatic negative thoughts and nonsuicidal self-injury after 2 months of the intervention (Pvalue<0.001). Conclusions: It can be concluded that dialectical behavior therapy was effective on automatic negative thoughts and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behavior among borderline personality disorder adolescents.