Borderline Personality Disorder: Examining Trajectories Of Development Among Adolescents

Title: Borderline personality disorder: examining trajectories of development among adolescents Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) tends to be highly comorbid with other disorders. In adolescence, information about the classification and development of BPD is in its early stages. There is limited empirical research available that investigates predictors of clinically significant symptom trajectories of the disorder using data collected in childhood. Given the enormous personal and societal costs associated with BPD, early detection and prevention is important. Clinical implications of this research include an improved understanding of risk factors and possible mechanisms for development of BPD symptomatology. Objectives: To identify trajectories of BPD symptomatology in a Canadian sample of adolescents (N = 703) assessed at ages 13, 14, 15 and 16, while examining predictors of trajectory group membership assessed at age 12. Methods: Data from the McMaster Teen Study was used to examine trajectories of BPD symptoms using group-based trajectory modeling. The influence of gender, depression, ADHD, family functioning and various sociodemographic variables as predictors of an individual’s group membership was tested. Chi-square, analysis of variance and multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the data. Results: A four-group trajectory model was most robust at describing BPD symptomatology in this age group. Univariate analyses supported female gender, depression and ADHD at baseline, parental age, marital status, education, and income as significant predictors of group membership. Female gender, depression and ADHD severity at baseline were significant predictors of group membership when adopting a multivariate approach. There is a greater prevalence of girls with higher depression and ADHD scores in the high-increasing features and BPD group. Conclusion: Findings demonstrate four various developmental trajectories of BPD features. Results further the understanding of the factors associated with development of the disorder across time.ThesisMaster of Science (MSc)Information about the classification and development of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in adolescence is in its early stages. While evidence for similar construct validity to the adult disorder exists for adolescents, major gaps in knowledge regarding the stability in course of BPD symptoms and predictors of clinically significant symptom trajectories in this age group remain. As most clinicians will assess youth already having significant features of the disorder, early detection requires knowledge of the indicators that precede an unfavourable trajectory. This dissertation will help address these gaps by modeling trajectories of BPD symptoms in youth across ages 13-16, whilst examining factors influencing trajectory group membership

School libraries and weblogs- a study of school librarians use of weblog as a working tool

The aim of this study is about how school librarians useweblogs as a working tool. I wanted to examine how someschool librarians use weblogs as a working tool and why theyare using them. I also wanted to know the advantages anddisadvantages they see with this tool. I believe that children andteenagers are interested in social media- tools and also are bigusers and consumers of these tools. Therefore I thought it mightbe interesting to examine how school librarians who havechildren and young people as their main target group, work withweblogs which is one of many social media tools.The methodology used for this study is interviews. I didthree face-to-face interviews and two interviews by sending theinterview guide with questions to the participants. The interviewguide was sent by e-mail as a wordfile-document. The answerswere written by the participants directly in the word-documentand then sent back to me in the same way. Farkas (2007) dividethe use of weblogs into different kinds of blogs. I used thisdivision to present and analyze my result.The conclusions of this study are that school librarians useweblogs as News Blogs, Readers’ advisory blogs, Book Clubblogs, Marketing blogs, Blogs to build community, Blogs tosupplement workshops and as reference blogs. They useweblogs as a working tool to inform, to market the library, toreach out to their users, to tip about books etc. Some of theadvantages of weblogs according to my respondents are itssimplicity, its rapid way to disseminate information on and itsability to allow users to participate and communicate. Some ofthe disadvantages of weblogs as a working tool are that it takestime to blog, it’s hard to get readers and that there are fewpeople who give comments on the blog.Program: Bibliotekari