Attachment and Borderline Personality Features: The Mediating Roles of Hypomentalizing and Epistemic Mistrust.

ABSTRACT: Insecure attachment is a well-established risk factor for the emergence of borderline personality features (BPF), encompassing identity disturbance, affective instability, problematic interpersonal relationships and self-harming behaviours. From a mentalizing-based perspective, BPF may develop through the interplay of hypomentalizing, defined as a reduced capacity to understand and reflect on one's own and others' mental states, and epistemic mistrust (EM), the diminished capacity to trust communicated information. Both processes are shaped by attachment anxiety and avoidance. However, research investigating the mechanisms linking attachment to BPF remains limited. This study examined the parallel mediating roles of hypomentalizing and EM in the associations between attachment dimensions a

SUBMITTER: Kurt Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12660061 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature