Pre-Intervention Monitoring of Affect and Relationships in Youth

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a disorder with serious symptoms as
well as negative consequences in the long term, especially for mental health.
Although the first symptoms of BPD usually develop during adolescence,
therapists mainly diagnose patients with BPD in adulthood. For a long time,
also research mainly focused on adulthood, but more research is now focusing on
adolescents at risk for BPD as well. Besides, early intervention programs for
this target group are rising. However, these programs are still limited, which
means that many adolescents are on waiting lists for a suitable intervention.
With our research project, we aim to test a new intervention (PRIMARY) for
adolescents at risk for BPD. PRIMARY works through an online monitor and aims
to help adolescents with BPD symptoms - while they are on the waiting list - to
gain more insight in their emotions and hazardous situations.

Primary objectives:
1) Investigate the effectivity of PRIMARY on BPD related problems (especially
self-harm, emotion regulation and social relationships)

Secondary objectives:
1) Understanding the underlying mechanisms (especially social relationships) of
the development of BPD symptoms
2) Investigate the effect of PRIMARY on the treatment program called HYPE
3) Investigate the satisfaction with PRIMARY

The study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with control group. We use the
Experience Sampling Method (ESM): patients fill out a short questionnaire on
their smartphone 5 times a day, for 4 weeks long. Furthermore, they fill out
questionnaires three times: at start (T1), at the end (T2) and a couple of
weeks after PRIMARY (T3).

PRIMARY is an online monitor which asks participants to register their
emotions, social relationships and behavior (5 times a day, for 4 weeks). Once
a week, a researcher discusses the data from the past week with the
participant, using graphs. We expect that this enlarges the understanding of
emotions, improves emotion regulation and social relationships, and diminishes
self-harm.

The intervention group fills out a short questionnaire (2-3 minutes) 5 times a
day, for 4 weeks. Once a week, they will have an appointment with a researcher
to discuss the data on a secure online platform; this takes 15 minutes. The
intervention* and control group fill out questionnaires three times (T1-T3),
which takes 45-60 minutes each time. The risks associated with the research are
negligible.