Predicting of borderline personality disorder (BPD) based on emotional intelligence, apathy and empathy among the soldiers admitted to a military hospital

Resumen

Due to the prevalence of BPD among soldiersand the importance of their mentalhealth, the purpose of the study was toexamine the relationship between emotional intelligence,alexithymia and empathy with BPD among the soldiersand to evaluate whether these variables could predictPBD. The study was cross-sectional with descriptive design.In this study, 150 soldiers with BPD admitted to 505Army Psychiatric Hospital, Tehran were selected by conveniencesampling and answered the following questionnaires:Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I), TorontoAlexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and Mehrabian and EpsteinEmpathy Questionnaire (EQ) with data analysis done inSPSS. The aspects of EQ had a reverse and significant relationshipwith BPD (r=-0.81), (p=0.01) and the relationshipbetween alexithymia and PBD was direct and significant(p = 0.46) r), (p = 0.01), and the aspects of empathy andBPD were related inversely and significantly (r = -0.26), (p= 0.01). The results showed that the symptoms of BPDcould be predicted somehow based on EI, alexithymia andempathy in soldiers with this disorder. From among theaspects of the variables studied, ability to solve problem,self-respect, self-actualization and optimism, objectivethinking and difficulty in emotion recognition, emotionalsusceptibility, reactive empathy, participatory empathy andempathy toward others had the greatest roles in the predictionof BPD, but the subscale of independence with BPDexamined among the soldiers was insignificant. These resultsare predictable in the context of emotional maladaptation,emotional distress, and mental impairment in BPD.