The Effect of Oxytocin Administration on Interpersonal Cooperation in Borderline Personality Disorder Patients and Healthy Adults

Who can take part

• BPD subjects meets criteria for DSM-IV Borderline Personality Disorder
• 18 to 55 years old
• Healthy controls are free of any lifetime DSM-IV Axis I or Axis II diagnosis. However, to avoid a group of HC's too highly groomed and unrepresentative of the general population subjects meeting criteria for a past Axis I diagnosis of adjustment, dysthymic, or depressive NOS disorders, specific phobias, and sleep disorders will not be excluded. Subjects will not be excluded for a non-IV substance abuse disorder more than 6 months prior to enrollment
• All subjects will be free of psychotropic medications for 2 weeks (6 weeks for fluoxetine)
• Subjects may be enrolled in psychotherapy

Who cannot take part

• Substance abuse disorder in the prior 6 months
• BPD subjects not meeting DSM-IV criteria for past or present bipolar I disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, substance dependence, head trauma, CNS neurological disease, seizure disorder or current major depression. Since depression is commonly associated with BPD, too stringent a depression exclusion criterion would yield a clinically atypical BPD sample. For this reason, BPD patients with Axis I depressive disorders other than major depression and those with a past history of major depression will not be excluded
• Significant medical illness
• Pregnancy
• Metallic foreign-bodies that contraindicate MRI