Personality disorders and intimate partner aggression: A replication and extension in older, married couples

Intimate partner aggression (IPA) is a significant public health burden, and thus efforts to identify individual characteristics that predict perpetration of IPA is an important research question. Personality disorders are a significant correlate of IPA, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Much of that work, however, had been conducted in younger samples. IPA in older adults is a relatively understudied area of research generally. Thus, examining the association between personality pathology and IPA in older adults is novel and important. In previous work using the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network sample, we found that borderline personality disorder was a robust correlate of perpetrating partner aggression in older, romantically involved participants. In the current analyses, we attempted to replicate our original findings in the same sample assessed 2.5 years later. We also extended the original work by using both self- and partner-reported IPA and by using latent factors of personality pathology. We found that prevalence of IPA in this sample was similar to the baseline assessment; 69.1% reported IPA in the past year, with the vast majority being psychological/verbal rather than physical aggression. Agreement between partners on perpetration was modest. Borderline personality pathology was again the strongest and most consistent predictor of IPA. Our findings speak to the continuing public health burden of borderline personality pathology into older age as evidenced by associations with perpetration of IPA. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).