Self-esteem and psychiatric syndromes

The purposes of the study were (1) to dichotomize each of the personal illness classes into those expected and those not expected to retain a relatively high degree of anxiety-depression; (2) to seek confirmation of this division by means of the combined DSSI sets of Anxiety and Depression; (3) to examine their respective scores on the Personality Deviance Scales; and (4) to examine the relationship between Anxiety-Depression and intropunitiveness. It was found that within each of the four classes the predicted 'affective' group scored significantly higher on DSSI Anxiety-Depression than did the 'non-affective' group. On intropunitiveness, the 'affective' group scored significantly higher within three classes and almost so in the forth. Although anxiety-depression and intropunitiveness both discriminate between the 'affective' and 'non-affective' groups their conceptual distinction is empirically based.