[Screening measure for borderline personality disorder]

Abstract

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a life-threatening mental disorder. To date, there is no German screening tool available. To examine the psychometric properties of a German version of the McLean Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder (MSI-BPD). A heterogeneous outpatient sample (N=168) was used to examine discriminatory ability, diagnostic efficiency as well as indicators for internal consistency and convergent validity. The area under the curve was AUC=0.90 (CI 95%: 0.85 <AUC <0.96). Using the cut-off point ≥ 7, which corresponds to the maximal Youden-Index, 91% of individuals with BPD (sensitivity) and 80% of individuals without BPD were identified correctly (specificity). The internal consistency was 0.81. Associations with other self-rating measures were found as expected. The German version of the MSI-BPD has demonstrated good psychometric properties for a screening tool.