[Personality traits and vulnerability markers--problems of assessment]

Personality traits play an increasing role in research on the vulnerability to mental disorders. Problems of their assessment are dealt with here with special reference to work of our own in this area. Personality inventories for self-rating or informants' rating are appropriate instruments for retrospective as well as prospective investigations. They should be short and, at the same time, suites for the assessment of the main dimensions of personality, the "Big Five". The Munich Personality Test (MPT) and the Six Factor Test (SFT) serve as examples in this context. They were already successfully applied in clinical and outpatient settings and in "high-risk" studies. In retrospective investigations, a newly developed method for the operationalized diagnosis of personality types from case history data can be used as well. On the basis of this approach, we have recently developed a Biographical Personality Interview (BPI) which, in combination with personality inventories, can be regarded an optimal device for the assessment of premorbid personality in psychiatric patients.