Personality Traits in Former Depressed Patients and in Healthy Subjects without Past History of Depression

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Abstract
208 patients (81 male and 127 female) in the age range 21–67 years completed a Swedish personality inventory (Karolinska Sjukhusets Personlighetsinventorium; KSP) aimed at measuring stable personality traits after recovering from the depressive syndrome. Diagnostically, the series comprised 62 unipolars, 31 bipolars, 58 neurotic-reactive depressives, and 57 patients with an ‘unspecified’ depressive disorder, i.e., those patients who did not meet the criteria for inclusion in any of the aforementioned groups. As a contrast group, a series of 75 mentally healthy individuals (27 men and 48 women with a mean age of 39.5 ± 12.1 years) without any past history of depression was also investigated. The former patients scored differently from the healthy controls in almost all the personality variables covered by the KSP, with the exception of the variable ‘social desirability’, on which all groups scored alike. A factor analysis of the results yielded three principal factors: factor 1 covering such variables which reflect anxiety proneness, psychasthenia, suspicion, and guilt; factor 2 (bipolar) covering different aspects of aggression; and factor 3 comprising the variables ‘impulsiveness’ and ‘monotony avoidance’. From the present study it is concluded that although inter-group differences do occur, the main characteristics of the personality of the depression-prone individual seem to be anxiety, psychasthenia (covering such traits as orderly, conscientious, bound to routine), suspicion, and guilt. Such characteristics are shared by all diagnostic subgroups. Depression-prone individuals also show a higher level of inhibited aggression and a lower level of manifest aggression than healthy controls. The results verify earlier findings by other authors as well as those by our group. Reasons why the personality structure characterizing our former patients should not be regarded as a complication of a previous depressive disorder are discussed. It is assumed that these characteristics might represent an important psychological variable that contributes to enhancing an individual’s reactivity to adverse external events leading to a depressive breakdown.

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