Relationship between Personality and Disability in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Objective: The co-morbidity of major depressive disorder (MDD) with personality disorders (PDs) in patients with long-standing work disability at a psychiatry clinic was investigated. The purpose of our study was to evaluate personality for contributing to disability in patients with MDD and to investigate the relationship with these two psychometric characters in patients with MDD. Method: Seventy-two patients with a MDD and 72 healthy controls were assessed by means of both clinician and self-rating scales for depression, anxiety, disability, and the SCID-II personality inventory. Results: There was no difference between the personality parameters of the groups regarding schizotypal and antisocial PDs. Avoidant personality was found to be less common in the patient group (p=0.030). Dependent (p<0.001), obsessive (p=0.003), passive-aggressive (p=0.025), self-defeating (p<0.001), paranoid (p<0.001), schizoid (p=0.012), histrionic (p=0.001), narcissistic (p<0.001), and borderline (p<0.001) PDs in patients were more common than in controls. On the disability sub-scales, physical role limitation, vitality, social functioning, emotional role limitation, and mental health were significantly lower in patient group than normal control group. While Cluster A was not related to any disability subscale, Cluster B had a positive correlation with vitality and mental health, whereas Cluster C and Cluster NOS had a negative correlation with emotional role limitation. Only the emotional role limitation predicts the presence of depression, whereas only self-defeating, obsessive, paranoid, and passive aggressive personality predict the emotional role limitation. Conclusion: Patients with MDD have personality and disability problems. PDs in depression contribute to disability. Our results demonstrated that the emotional role limitation is the unique sub-scale that predicts the MDD group.