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Personality and depression: A review of theory model and behavior and neural mechanism

LI Yu^1,2, WEI Dong-Tao^1,2, SUN Jiang-Zhou^1,2, MENG Jie^1,2, REN Zhi-Ting^1,2, HE Li³, ZHUANG Kai-Xiang^1,2, QIU Jiang^1,2,*

¹Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China；²Department of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China；³School of Education, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China

Abstract

The analysis of the relationship between personality and depression can facilitate the development of subclinical preventive measures and clinical treatment schemes. Moreover, the personality is associated with a variety of mental diseases, and there is substantial comorbidity between depression and some other mental diseases. So, to reveal pathological relationships between personality and depression is helpful to understand the etiology of the comorbidity between depression and multiple mental disorders. In this review, we first summarize the empirical researches on the relationship between personality and depression from the aspects of behavior and neural mechanisms, and then discuss the hypothetical model to explain the relationship between personality and depression. In a word, high neuroticism, low extroversion and conscientiousness, and other related traits (rumination, self-criticism, dependency, etc.) have a moderate to strong correlation with depression. Among them, neuroticism is the most concerned. To a certain extent, it can predict the onset of depression and affect the duration and treatment outcome of depression. Other traits, such as positive emotionality/ extroversion and effortful control/responsibility, can moderate the relationship between negative emotionality/neuroticism and depression. And after the onset of depression, the neuroticism may change, but the extroversion does not seem to change.

Key words: personality traits; depression; neuroticism; extraversion; neuromechanism

Received: 2018-09-15　　Accepted: 2018-10-09

Corresponding author: 邱江　　E-mail: qiuj318@swu.edu.cn

DOI: 10.13294/j.aps.2018.0101

Citing This Article：

LI Yu, WEI Dong-Tao, SUN Jiang-Zhou, MENG Jie, REN Zhi-Ting, HE Li, ZHUANG Kai-Xiang, QIU Jiang. Personality and depression: A review of theory model and behavior and neural mechanism. Acta Physiol Sin 2019; 71 (1): 163-172 (in Chinese with English abstract).