A Preliminary Study of the Interactive Effect of Avoidant Personality Disorder Symptoms and Expressive Suppression on the Outcome of a Psychodynamically Oriented Day Treatment Program.

Introduction: Patients with avoidant personality disorder (AvPD) pathology tend to have poor prognosis in psychotherapy, yet there has been little research conducted to better understand why their outcomes are limited, making it difficult to improve treatments for them. Expressive suppression is a dysfunctional emotion regulation strategy that may exacerbate avoidant tendencies, further complicating the therapeutic process. Methods: Using data from a naturalistic study (N = 34) of a group-based day treatment program, we examined whether there was an interactive effect of AvPD symptoms and expressive suppression on treatment outcome. Results: Findings revealed a significant moderating effect of expressive suppression on the association between AvPD symptoms and treatment outcome. The outcome for patients with more severe AvPD symptoms was particularly poor when they engaged in high levels of expressive suppression. Discussion: The findings suggest that the combination of significant AvPD pathology and high expressive suppression is associated with poorer responsiveness to treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Psychodynamic Psychiatry is the property of Guilford Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)