| Summary: | Existing research has predominantly focused on a limited range of childhood events and personality disorders, such as childhood maltreatment and borderline personality disorder. Moreover, researchers rarely account for multiple risk factors within the same study, despite the reality that childhood events do not occur in isolation. Therefore, the current research aims to contribute to the knowledge on childhood events and personality disorder symptoms by investigating a wider range of risk and protective factors in a community-based sample. The first study was a survey that identified common positive childhood events for inclusion in a new childhood events checklist that was designed to assess a wider range of both positive and negative childhood events. Study Two used latent class analysis to profile the childhood events and personality disorder symptoms. Study Three provided an examination of the association between the latent classes of negative childhood events, positive childhood events and personality disorder symptoms. Study Four provided a more in-depth understanding into the factors underpinning the relationships between childhood events and personality disorder symptoms from a qualitative perspective. Overall, the results showed that a lack of positive childhood events greatly exacerbates the likelihood of developing personality disorder symptoms in addition to the effects of negative events. In tandem with other risk and protective factors, interpersonal interactions, coping styles and subjective perceptions of one’s own experiences appeared to play a role in the risk of developing personality disorders. The implications from this research are that personality disorder treatment approaches should focus on fostering positive thoughts, feelings and behaviours to affect the risk of personality disorder symptoms.
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