Personality traits like neuroticism and introversion may be linked to depression, according to a new study that explores the relationship between personality and common mental health problems.
Researchers at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in New York found that depression and anxiety disorders shared similar personality profiles, suggesting that our personalities may play a role in the development of such conditions.
However, the relationship between these conditions and certain personality traits changed over people’s lifetimes.
The findings of the study were published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
For the study, the team analyzed data from 1,494 participants aged between six and 85, which allowed them to look at the relationship between personality and mental health at different stages of life.
The participants were asked to fill in questionnaires to assess their personality traits, as well as whether they had symptoms of depression, an anxiety disorder, both depression and anxiety or no psychiatric condition at all.
The study found that people with symptoms of depression and anxiety shared similar personality profiles. Participants who had symptoms of both conditions were found to be more vulnerable.
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The traits of neuroticism and introversion were the strongest predictors of depression.
However, the relationship between personality traits, depression and anxiety appeared to change over time.
In adolescence, a positive relationship between anxiety and neuroticism and conscientiousness was found.
Yet in adulthood, the positive association between anxiety and conscientiousness became negative, but a negative association with extraversion was found.
Meanwhile, depression symptom severity was only associated with personality during adolescence. It was found to be positively correlated with neuroticism and negatively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
According to the researchers, the differences between adolescence and adulthood highlight the importance of examining personality and mental health disorders across different developmental stages.
For example, a separate study published in Social Neuroscience in 2014 found conscientiousness and neuroticism are linked to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is not fully developed until adulthood.
“Our machine learning model reveals just how important personality is when it comes to mental health, with neuroticism and introversion identified as being the two strongest predictors of depression diagnosis,” said lead authors Zhen Yang and Vilma Gabbay in a press statement on the latest study.
“Interestingly, our analysis is on symptoms rather than diagnoses, and the relationship between depression symptomatology and personality only existed during adolescence, suggesting that depression may be triggered by biological and/or life events, reinforcing depression’s episodic nature.”
They added: “Moreover, our findings also underscore the importance of examining personality in the context of development with conscientiousness, such as doing well in school driving anxiety in adolescence, whereas social interactions and introversion play an important role in adulthood.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.