Personality self-reports are concurrently reliable and valid during acute depressive episodes.
BACKGROUND
It is alleged that depression distorts the assessment of general personality traits. To test that hypothesis, we examined scores on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) administered to acutely depressed patients at baseline and 14 to 26 weeks after treatment with antidepressant medication.


METHODS
Two hundred and fifty patients completed the NEO-PI-R at baseline, 109 patients after 14 to 26 weeks of antidepressant pharmacotherapy. 48 patients (49.5%) were identified as responders while 49 (50.5%) were identified as non-responders. The remaining 12 patients were excluded because they met HRSD response criteria but not the SCID-I MDD criteria at treatment completion.


RESULTS
At baseline, NEO-PI-R scales showed high internal consistency and replicated the normative factor structure, suggesting that psychometric properties were preserved. Among non-responders, retest correlations were uniformly high (rs=.50 to .88) and mean levels showed little change, providing evidence for the consistency of personality self-reports during an acute depressive episode. NEO-PI-R scales showed construct validity in the concurrent prediction of a number of clinical criteria. Effective treatment had significant effects on the mean levels of neuroticism, which decreased, and extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness, which increased.


CONCLUSIONS
The participants were from a clinical database and were not randomly assigned for the treatment.


CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that the effect of acute depression is to amplify somewhat the personality profile of people prone to depression. Rather than regard these depression-caused changes in assessed personality trait levels as a distortion, we interpret them as accurate reflections of the current condition of the individual. Personality traits have biological bases, and when they are changed (by disease or therapeutic interventions) trait levels change.
Costa
Paul T
PT
Laboratory of Personality and Cognition, National Institute on Aging, NIH, DHHS, Gerontology Research Center, 5600 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224-6825, United States. costap@mail.nih.gov
Bagby
R Michael
RM
Herbst
Jeffrey H
JH
McCrae
Robert R
RR
D000208:Acute Disease; D000928:Antidepressive Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D016896:Treatment Outcome
D000928:Antidepressive Agents