Temperament and Character Domains of Personality and Depression

The link between personality and depression has long intrigued researchers and clinicians alike. Personality has been viewed as contributing to the onset and course of depression as well as influencing therapeutic choices for depression. Two major current personality theories are the " Big Five, " in which the NEO-PI is used as a measuring instrument, and the Psychobiology Theory of Personality, which uses the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) as a measuring instrument. This special issue deals with the latter theory in terms of its interrelations with depression and related conditions. The last couple of decades have witnessed a great number of research reports on this topic. The association of TCI dimension with diverse types of health problems, and depression in particular, has been reported in the literature. The TCI has also been studied in terms of predicting treatment responses of depressed patients. Genetic and environmental correlates of TCI dimensions are a hot topic among researchers. Hence we believe that the present special issue is very timely. This issue consists of six reports. K. Josefsson and colleagues , in Finland, present results from a longitudinal study of young Finns. Based on TCI scores at Time 1, the group tried to predict levels of depression 10 years later. They found that both high harm avoidance (HA) and low self-directed-ness (SD) independently predicted later depression severity. Thus, a prospective population-based design yielded findings that echoed the results of past cross-sectional and clinical treatment studies. In a two-year follow-up study of a clinical population of depression, J. G. Goekoop and colleagues in the Netherland reported that only the increase in SD (in this two-year period) was related to the decrease in emotional dysregulation symptoms, while the increase in SD was associated with the decrease in HA. This suggests that symptomatic recovery follows reversibility of lowered SD. People with current depression may be diagnosed with bipolar disorder if they have a lifelong history of manic or hypomanic episodes. Hence the association of TCI profiles with depression should be examined in terms of previous diagnoses of mood disorders. J. A. Harley and colleagues, in New Zealand, relate the results of their South Island Bipolar Study, namely, that high HA scores differentiated people with major depressive disorder (MDD) and those with bipolar disorder (BD) from unaffected relatives of bipolar probands after controlling for the current severity of depression. HA, however, failed to differentiate those with MDD …