Personality Disorders and Depression
Abstract
Individuals with personality disorders (PDs) may be unaware of or unwilling to report on their own PD-related maladaptive behaviors and how these behaviors affect others. This set of circumstances makes the assessment of the PD continuum challenging. Informants who know individuals with PD symptoms may be uniquely situated to aid the assessment of the PD continuum. Indeed, they may have better access to and more willingness to report PD-related symptoms than targets. The primary aim of the present study was to investigate whether informants report PD symptoms with more precision and at lower levels of PD intensity than targets. Further, research has shown that PD pathology is linked to clinical disorders in different ways. Depression is one of the most widely-researched clinical disorders in psychiatry, and research has shown that PDs affect its etiology, assessment, and treatment. Thus, a secondary aim of the present study was to analyze the relationship between self- and informant-reported PD features and depression. The sample consisted of 1387 targets, ages 55 to 65 (56% women), who were recruited for an epidemiological longitudinal study examining the effects of PDs on health and social functioning. In addition, for each target an informant—an acquaintance who provided information about the target’s personality—was included. Results for the present study largely supported the hypotheses. Informants identified PD pathology earlier in the development of the PD, and more precisely than targets. Furthermore, informant-reported PD pathology accounted for more variance in informant-reported depression than self-reported PD pathology accounted for the variance in self-reported depression. Results highlight the diagnostic benefits of informant report.
Citation
Ungredda, Tatiana M (2017). Personality Disorders and Depression. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /166084.