Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Borderline personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, emotions, impulsivity, and suicidal behavior, which develops in early adulthood and manifests in a variety of contexts. It is important to determine what psychological factors contribute to increasing the level of psychological well–being. One of the factors related to psychological well–being is optimism. The next important factor related to mental well–being is resilience. Some of the consequences of high–level features of borderline personality disorder are that may interfere with emotional regulation, achieving life goals, and psychological well–being. So, this study aimed to examine the relationship between optimism and resilience with psychological well–being based on the mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation of university students with symptoms of borderline personality disorder at Allameh Tabatabai University.
Methods: The present study was analytical using structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the present study was all students of Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran City, Iran, in the academic year of 2018–2019, which according to the information was 18500 students. Because the target sample of this study, students had symptoms of borderline personality disorder at Allameh Tabatabai University, the research sample was selected by purposive sampling method using a Borderline Personality Scale (Jackson and Claridge, 1991), and considering the cut–off point 10 among the students. Finally, 554 students with symptoms of borderline personality disorder were selected. Data were collected via Psychological Well–Being Scale (Ryff, 1989), Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor and Davidson, 2003), the Optimism Questionnaire (Scheier et al., 1994), and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006). Descriptive and inferential statistics methods were used to analyze the data of this research. In the descriptive statistics section, the lowest and highest scores, mean and standard deviation were used. In the inferential statistics section, the Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling were used in SPSS version 23 and LISREL version 8.80. The significance level for all tests was considered 0.05.
Results: The results showed that among the research variables, spirituality and open–mindedness and refocusing on planning had a higher degree of a direct relationship with psychological well–being (p<0.05). On the other hand, rumination and catastrophizing variables had a lower degree of inverse relationship with psychological well–being (p<0.05). Also, the indirect effect of optimism (p=0.042, β=0.072) and resilience (p=0.001, β=0.277) on psychological well–being through positive emotional cognitive regulation was significant. Also, the indirect effect of optimism (p=0.126, β=0.011) and resilience (p=0.187, β=0.006) with psychological well–being through negative emotional cognitive regulation was insignificant. Also, the fit indices were all at a suitable level (NFI=0.93, CFI=0.94, GFI=0.92, AGFI=0.90, RMSEA=0.064).
Conclusion: The results of this study show that emotion regulation is an important psychological construct in predicting borderline personality symptoms and in clinical interventions, emotion regulation can be considered a useful goal to reduce the symptoms of borderline personality disorder.