Background: Role of psychological risk factors in depression involved researchers for a long period of time. The purpose of the present study was to compare the five personality traits and the defense styles among patients with depression disorder (MDD) with non-depression individuals.
Materials and methods: The research method was ex post facto and statistical community was all individuals referred to psychological clinics in Tehran. 100 MDD patients referred to associated clinics of University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences selected by convenient sampling method and the 100 non-depression people as control group were studied. The research instruments were Beck Depression Inventory, Five Factor Personality Inventory (NEO-FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1992), and defense style questionnaire (DSQ-40, Andrews, Sing & Bond, 1993). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent T-test.
Results: Findings revealed significant differences in neuroticism (P<0.01), extraversion (P<0.01), openness (P<0.01), and agreeableness (P<0.05), as well as immature (P<0.01) and Neurotic (P<0.05) defense styles between MDD and healthy groups.
Conclusion: It is concluded that awareness of effects of personality traits and defense styles on depression can be effective to decrease the depression disorder and probably to prevent this disorder.