Personality traits and disorder in depression

Abstract

The relationship of personality traits and personality disorder to depressive subtype, descriptive characteristics, and outcome in 160 depressed inpatients was examined. Personality disorder was significant more common in unipolar nonmelancholic depressed patients (61%) than in unipolar melancholic (14%) or bipolar depressed patients (23%). Personality disorder did not affect symptom manifestation but was related to earlier onset of depressive illness and worse outcome within the unipolar nonmelancholic group. Obsessive traits were most common in the unipolar melancholic patients, while histrionic, hostile and borderline traits predominated in the nonmelancholic patients. Usefulness of a multiaxial diagnostic system and the importance of separating trait and disorder in personality assessment were discussed.