The influence of comorbid personality disorders on recovery from depression

The impact of personality disorders on the treatment of and recovery from depression is still a controversial topic. The aim of this paper is to provide more information on what has led to this disagreement.

Clinician-rated Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) scores were assessed among 82 depressed outpatients who were receiving a routine treatment combination of antidepressant medication and psychosocial intervention. The participants were followed up over five visits at 3-month intervals: at the baseline, at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. Personality disorders were assessed after the last visit in accordance with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. These repeated measures were used to explore the impact of personality disorders on HAMD scores by using a linear mixed model.

Among the four personality clusters that were used (A, B, C, and mixed), only those in cluster B and in the mixed cluster were found to take significantly longer than those without personality disorders, for reduction in HAMD scores over the course of treatment.

In this study, the impact of personality disorders on treatment outcomes varied with the way that the personality disorder variables were described and used as independent predictors. This is because the outcomes were influenced by the impact weight of each personality disorder, even within the same cluster.