ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1532234
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Heterogeneity of Psychiatric Symptoms and DisordersView all 18 articles
Dissociative experiences mediate the association between childhood trauma and verbal hallucinations but not delusional thoughts in borderline personality disorder
Provisionally accepted
- 1University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- 2University Psychiatric Clinic Basel, Basel, Switzerland
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Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), a disturbance of auditory perception, and delusions, a content-related thought disorder, are common in borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, they are not as thoroughly studied and clinically acknowledged as other symptoms.Associations between childhood trauma, dissociative symptoms, and AVH as well as/delusions have been reported in schizophrenia, but are understudied in BPD. Therefore, we calculated Pearsons' correlations and tested mediating effects of dissociative symptoms, assessed with the Dissociative Experiences Scale questionnaire (DES) on the association between childhood trauma, assessed with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and AVH as well as delusions. 74 BPD patients were examined with the Psychotic Symptoms Rating Scale interview (PSYRATS). For the mediation analyzes we used Preacher and Hayes' SPSS bootstrap macro to estimate mediator significance. AVH were reported by 10 (13.5%), delusional thoughts by 8 patients (10.8%). In the mediator analyses, dissociative experiences significantly mediated the association between childhood trauma and auditory verbal hallucinations with an unstandardized regression coefficient between CTQ-total
Keywords: dissociation, auditory verbal hallucination (AVH), Delusions, Adverse childhood events, Borderline Personality Disorder
Received: 21 Nov 2024; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schroeder, Schätzle, Schäfer and Huber. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Katrin Schroeder, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, 20246, Hamburg, Germany
Christian G. Huber, University Psychiatric Clinic Basel, Basel, Switzerland
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