Depression-prone personality in women.

Abstract

An inventory of 134 self-descriptive items was developed to test the hypothesis that women who have been depressed have personalities different from those who have not. When the responses of the two groups were compared, 62 of the trial items discriminated between the two groups at the .05 level of significance. When these discriminating items were factor analyzed, five interpretable factors emerged: low self-esteem, unhappy outlook, narcissistic vulnerability, helplessness, and confidence. These findings suggest that any one or more of several different qualities of personality may distinguish women who have had a depression from women who have not had a depression. The present study was designed to test the following specific hypothesis: Formerly depressed women now in remission describe certain features of their personality in a manner different from that of women who have never been depressed. The first task was the formulation of selfdescriptive items that could discriminate in the manner predicted by the hypothesis. The formulation of the items was preceded by a searching examination of concepts (e.g., low self-esteem, narcissism, unhappy outlook, repressed hostility, and helplessness) and descriptions offered by many prior students of depression (Abraham, 1960/ 1911; Beck, 1967; Bibring, 1952; Cohen, Cohen, Fromm-Reichmann, & Weigert, 1954; Fenichel, 1945; Freud, 1957/1917; Homey, 1945; M. Klein, 1948; Rado, 1928). These writers have provided de facto characterizations of the personality of people who get depressed, and many but not all of these characterizations have common elements. Most of the items in the present inventory reflect these descriptions. Some were adapted from Lazare and Klerman (1968) and from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, but all items were