Cross-validation of the demoralization construct in the Revised NEO Personality Inventory

Demoralization is defined as a pervasive, generalized negative emotional construct present in psychiatric disorders and a variety of medical conditions. Demoralization is also conceptualized as a ubiquitous affective-laden factor common to most forms of psychopathology that increases the magnitude of intercorrelations among putatively distinct psychiatric symptom scales (Tellegen, 1985). Using exploratory structural equation modeling to identify common variance across the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R), a measure of the five-factor model of personality, Noordhof, Sellbom, Eigenhuis, and Kamphuis (2015) constructed an 18-item Demoralization subscale in a Dutch-speaking sample of patients attending a clinic for personality disorders in the Netherlands. In the current study we sought to cross-validate these findings in an English-speaking and diagnostically heterogeneous sample of psychiatric patients (N = 1930) receiving consultation or treatment at a large mental health and addiction center in Canada. Our results support the construct validity of the Demoralization subscale and its capacity to account for demoralization-related variance in the NEO PI-R. We believe these findings support the general tenets of demoralization and the presence of this construct in the NEO PI-R item pool. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).