A five-year follow-up of patients with borderline pathology of childhood

Borderline pathology of childhood (BPC) may be a precursor of personality disorders. There is a lack of data concerning outcome in adolescence. A group of 59 adolescents, who had been treated as children in a Child Psychiatry Day Hospital five to seven years earlier, was evaluated. Using the child version of the Retrospective Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines, 28 participants had been diagnosed with BPC while the remaining 31 participants who did not have a history of BPC served as the comparison group. The youth and their parents were given a battery of measures assessing current psychopathology and functional status. The group with a history of BPC was more likely than the comparison group to exhibit a combination of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Adolescents with a history of BPC were more impaired than the comparison group on a global measure of functional status. Compared to children with no history of BPC, children diagnosed with BPC are more likely to display poorer functioning as adolescents and continue to be at risk for psychopathology during adolescence. Future directions for research are discussed.