Objectives: Patients suffering from borderline personality disorder are very prevalent in various settings (emergency rooms, psychiatric and general hospitals, ambulatory consultations). However, it remains one of the most stigmatized and neglected mental health conditions, albeit being an area that is responsible for very interesting advances in psychotherapy. Today, the prognosis of patients with borderline personality disorder is rather favorable, provided that they follow a dedicated psychotherapy. Conceptions about this condition therefore deserve to be updated as it is sufficiently described in the literature that negative attitudes towards these patients diminish the quality of care they receive as well as their prognosis, and that these attitudes change with training. We decided to study the state of knowledge and attitudes towards borderline personality disorder in a group of French-speaking caregivers interested in these patients.

Methods: Between 2019 and 2020, at the start of training sessions in psychotherapeutic approaches to borderline personality disorder, we provided two questionnaires to 126 caregivers from various professional backgrounds (psychiatrists or child psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers). The first consisted of 13 questions with 3 choice answers aimed at testing knowledge about borderline personality disorder and the second of 11 questions in the form of a Likert scale aimed at evaluating attitudes towards these patients (e.g. degree of comfort, involvement, hope, avoidance with these patients) adapted frome a questionnaire of Blake and colleagues.

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