Volume 5 | Issue 1 | 1 of 13 Int J Psychiatr Res, 2022 Mental Health Professionals’ Attitudes towards Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: The Role of Disgust 1 Postdoctoral Fellow, Laboratory of Clinical Psychology & Psychopathology, Community Psychiatry & Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece. 2 Professor, Laboratory of Clinical Psychology & Psychopathology, Community Psychiatry & Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece. Papathanasiou Chrysovalantis 1 * and Stylianidis Stelios 2 International Journal of Psychiatry Research ISSN 2641-4317 Research Article Citation: Papathanasiou C, Stylianidis S. Mental Health Professionals' Attitudes towards Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: The Role of Disgust. Int J Psychiatr Res 2022; 5(1): 1-13. ABSTRACT Negative attitudes towards patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may afect treatment outcomes. We aimed to identify a) negative attitudes exhibited by mental health professionals towards patients with BPD and b) the efects of disgust propensity and disgust sensitivity on these negative attitudes. Mental health professionals (N = 136) completed questionnaires on attitudes towards patients with BPD and disgust propensity/sensitivity. Signifcant diferences in negative attitudes towards patients with BPD based on gender, marital status, occupational subgroup, educational level, psychotherapy training, level of exposure to patients with BPD, and political ideology were found. Results suggested patients with BPD are viewed by mental health professionals as inefective, incomprehensible, dangerous, unworthy, immoral, undesirable to be with, and dissimilar to the mental health professionals. Moreover, disgust propensity and disgust sensitivity were associated with stronger negative attitudes towards patients with BPD. The fndings emphasize the importance of mental health professionals’ awareness of the emotion of disgust as a relevant factor to their negative attitudes towards patients with BPD. * Correspondence: Papathanasiou Chrysovalantis, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Department of Psychology, 136, Syngrou Av., Athens 17671, Greece. Received: 11 Jan 2022; Accepted: 09 Feb 2022; Published: 15 Feb 2022 Keywords Borderline Personality Disorder, Mental Health Professionals, Attitudes, Disgust Propensity, Disgust Sensitivity. Introduction Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are in constant search of psychiatric care [1] representing 15-25% of all reported psychiatric cases [2] and 36-67% of patients in psychiatric clinics [3], while frequency rates of BPD are estimated at 20% in hospitals and 11% in community settings respectively [4]. The global prevalence of BPD is between 0.7% and 5.9% [5-7]. Some 70% of patients with this diagnosis are likely to attempt suicide [8] and mortality rates are as high as 10% [9-11], making patients with BPD one of the most suicidal groups of all mental disorder clusters [11]. BDP is characterized by signifcant risks for suicide and suicidality, deliberate self-harm, emotional dysregulation and impulsive behaviors [12], and is seen by mental health professionals (MHPs) as difcult to treat clinically [13]. Although patients with BPD are emerging as important and systematic users of mental health services, there is probably no other patient group in psychiatry that is more associated with stereotypes, prejudice and stigma [14]. Patients with BPD are characterized by MHPs as “non-compliant”, “difcult”, “conficting”, “manipulative”; the catalogue of such negative evaluations is endless [15-17]. They tend to be seen more as “bad”, rather than “ill” characters [18,19], as they are considered to be more able to control their negative behaviors than other patient groups (e.g., patients with schizophrenia) [20-22]. As Bonnington and Rose [15] note, rather than being seen as ill, the behavior of patients with BPD is constructed as morally transgressive. Such stereotypes, which undoubtedly move in the direction of