Psychiatry Research EG

Personality is viewed today as a complex pattern of deeply embedded psychological characteristics that are largely nonconscious and not easily altered, expressing themselves automatically in almost every facet of functioning. Intrinsic and pervasive, these traits emerge from a complicated matrix of biological dispositions and experiential learning, and ultimately comprise the individual’s distinctive pattern of perceiving, feeling, thinking, coping, and behaving [1]. From the structural standpoint, most authors agree that personality consists of temperament, character, and intelligence. Roughly, temperament reflects biological contributions and character reflects social and cultural contributions to personality. Intelligence includes both constitutional and social traits and modifies overall personality functions. The basic functions of personality are to feel, think, and perceive and to incorporate these into purposeful behaviors [2]. According to Cloninger’s theory of personality, all personality aspects interact to influence mood disorders or anxiety disorders. He suggested that high harm avoidance is predicted to increase susceptibility to depression as well as to anxiety [3]. Coping styles may mediate vulnerability to mood disorders during pregnancy and lactation; an escape-avoidance coping style has been associated with depressive symptoms both during pregnancy and postpartum [4]. Personality traits such as neuroticism and introversion have been associated with depression in non-child-bearing populations. Neuroticism and introversion–extraversion represent major sources of individual variation in (a) emotionality and (b) sociability and activity level, respectively. A high neuroticism score indicates insecurity and a low score indicates emotional stability. A high introversion score indicates inhibition and shyness in social interactions and a low score indicates sociability and feelings of competence in social interactions. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the relationship between temperament and depression in the general population during specific life situations, such as pregnancy [5]. Although the presence of depression during and after pregnancy is currently considered a risk factor for the development of psycho-pathology in the child [6], few studies are available in the literature on the influence of the temperamental characteristics of pregnant women on depression. Some data are available on the postpartum period, however. High neuroticism in combination with high introversion was a stable predictor of clinical depression across the entire first year postpartum, and personality should be included in the early identification of those women who are at an increased risk for depression in the postpartum period [7]. With this background, this study was carried out to determine the presence of clinically significant psychiatric morbidity among pregnant and lactating women to explore whether there are temperament and character differences according to psychiatric morbidity and to assess temperament and character differences between depressed and nondepressed women.