Unraveling emotion dynamics in borderline personality disorder: Daily life event occurrence, event reactivity and subsequent recovery

<p>To unravel daily life emotion dynamics in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and evaluate the role context, we compared persons with BPD (N=40), a major depressive episode (MDE;N=38) and healthy controls (HC;N=40) on positive and negative event occurrence in daily life, reactivity to these events, and subsequent emotional recovery. All groups were prompted 10 times per day for 7 days to rate current positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) and the occurrences of positive and negative events using smartphones. While no differences were found for positive events, both clinical groups were more likely to report experiencing negative events compared to HC. Persons with BPD showed stronger reactivity in PA and NA following an event, but also larger changes in NA in the absence of negative events. Less robust indications were found for more recovery in PA and NA following the event. Findings highlight the importance of considering context in which changes occur.</p>