[Personality disorders and depression]

Comorbid relations between personality disorders (PD) of affective and non-affective types (anxiety-hypochondriac character) and depression were analyzed in 35 patients including 13 men (37.1%) and 22 women (62.9%), mean age 49.6±12.5 years. The formation of clinical entity - melancholic depression - was postulated in all cases regardless of PD type. The authors suggest a personality complex - a syndrome of depression risk that predicts the development of phasic affective disorders and exerts the effect on their clinical characteristics. This conception designates the complex of abnormal personality traits both obligatory and facultative (or even latent). The introduction of the definition of "the syndrome of depression risk" and its extrapolation on PD of non-affective types allow consideration of abnormalities of affective cluster and anxiety-hypochondriac character in the frames of a spectrum model.