A pilot randomized controlled study of a brief mentalizing enhancement intervention for borderline personality disorder
Yogev Kivity, Nati Pasternak, Rotem Moshe-Cohen, Shir Ada Basson, Leeav Sheena-Peer, Noa Steinberg, Tom Livni · 2025
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Description
People with borderline personality disorder struggle to read the minds behind other people's actions, and therapy that builds that skill usually takes months. Yogev Kivity and six co-authors tested a single-session version in 2025, randomizing forty-eight adults to a brief mentalizing workout or a comparison session of emotional sharing.
The workout group practiced inferring the mental states under behaviors in social scenes. Their observer-rated mentalizing jumped with a solid effect size, while the sharing group stayed flat. Distress afterward ran lower in the workout group too. One wrinkle: self-reported motivation to mentalize dipped in both groups. The pilot suggests even a short, focused push can move the core skill.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yogev Kivity, Nati Pasternak, Rotem Moshe-Cohen, Shir Ada Basson, Leeav Sheena-Peer, Noa Steinberg, Tom Livni |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 53 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |