title: [The premorbid personality in depressive disorders].
abstract: This paper deals with the possible relationships between premorbid personality and depressive disorders, with special emphasis in the involved methodological issues, the most influent theoretical frameworks and also the currently data that support these hypotheses. Methodological issues concerning premorbid personality and depression are analyzed. It is pointed out that different operational definitions regarding both personality and depression, the deficient nosological differentiation of depressive disorders, the choice of assessment evaluation tools and also the temporal point of evaluation could explain some of the observed disagreement in this field. Finally, currently data about premorbid personality and depressive disorder is critically reviewed. Available data shows that unipolar depressive subjects seems to be psychologically and socially more disturbed than bipolars (BP). Furthermore, assessed by different psychometric tests, BP subjects are almost undistinguishable from control groups. Further research should also take into account the subtle differences between the subtypes of depressive disorders in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of this problem.
authors.affiliation: Clínica Psiquiátrica, Universidad de Heidelberg.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Alvarado
mesh_terms: D003863:Depression / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*
vernacular_title: Acerca de la personalidad premórbida en los trastornos depresivos.