Differences in dimensional personality features in depressive and anxious adolescents

Objective: Dimensional properties of personality are new field which is placed under DSM-5 Section-3 for further research. DSM-5 Personality Inventory (PID-5) is an effective instrument to assess and implement personality dimensions in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment among adolescents; but the researches are limited. To address this issue, we aimed to compare the dimensional personality features between depressive and anxious adolescents using PID-5. Methods: Participants were recruited after they were evaluated with semi-structured psychiatric interviews. Patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders were excluded and total 280 subjects (70 male and 70 female in each group) were included in depression (DG) and anxiety (AG) groups. Results: Total PID-5 scores and all of the personality dimension scores, except those for negative effectivity (NA), were found to be significantly higher in DG than AG. We found positive correlation between all personality scores and the severity of depression and anxiety. Discussion: Our study showed that, even after excluding the cases with comorbidities, no difference was found between the DG and AG regarding NA; and this result could be the proof of the individually elevated NA in both groups bypassing a possible genetic influence. We found that DG had higher disinhibition scores than AG; and the lower disinhibition of anxious children may reflect higher behavioral inhibition levels, which is considered to be a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Cross-sectional design of our study makes it difficult to evaluate causality between the personality dimensions and psychopathology; so further longitudinal studies using these new personality dimensions are needed.