Persisting Personalities Among Depressed Women

Descriptions of patients' premorbid personalities were provided by family informants at the time of the depressive episode, and one year later at follow-up the informants were asked to describe the current personalities. A comparison of the initial and follow-up descriptions for a sample of 190 depressive women showed that personality characteristics traditionally ascribed to depressive patients tended to provide a persisting characterization for most of the sample. There was a diminution in the incidence of certain personality characteristics for a small but significant portion of the sample.