Discrimination of former depressed patients from healthy volunteers on the basis of stable personality traits assessed by means of KSP

Summary A total of 208 former depressed patients were investigated by means of the personality inventory KSP and compared to 75 healthy volunteers who had never had an affective episode.By means of discriminant analysis 81.3% of the subjects could be correctly classified as former depressed patients or healthy volunteers. When patients in the diagnostic subgroups, unipolars, bipolars, patients with neurotic-reactive depressions and patients with unspecified depressions were compared to healthy volunteers, 85.4%, 83.0%, 84.2% and 86.4% respectively could be correctly classified.The main personality traits differentiating former depressed patients from healthy volunteers were high scores on subscales measuring psychasthenia, impulsivity, guilt and inhibition of aggression and low scores on subscales measuring indirect aggression, hostility, socialization and verbal aggression.Supported in part by grants from the Swedish Medical Research Council (grants No. 5244, 5740)