Personality traits of psychotic and nonpsychotic depressive patients

Personality traits of 46 psychotic depressive patients (PD) were compared with those of two matched control groups of nonpsychotic endogenous (NPED) and nonpsychotic nonendogenous (NPNED) depressive patients. Discriminant analyses using personality variables point to more marked differences between PD and NPNED patients than between PD and NPED ones. PD and NPNED groups had opposite traits on the bipolar personality scales of obsessionality vs. hysteria and self-sufficiency vs. group dependence; anxiety, present in both groups, was more pronounced in the NPNED patients. The dependence, introversion and prominent obsessional traits were the distinctive attributes of PD patients when compared with NPED patients. The results are discussed in terms of the two alternative hypotheses concerning psychotic depression: one considering delusions as a function of depression severity and the other as a distinct pathological trait. Our data do not support the exclusive validity of either of these two models.