Depressive personality disorder: theoretical issues, clinical findings, and future research questions.

This article reviews the theoretical construct of depressive personality disorder and its related research. The history of depressive personality disorder is reviewed. It is concluded that differing theories converge on similar descriptions and mechanisms of development for the depressive personality disorder. Substantial empirical work supports the diagnostic distinctiveness of depressive personality disorder in clinical populations. Past and current assessment devices for assessing depressive personality disorder are also described along with their psychometric properties and clinical value. Suggestions are made for future research on the etiology and validity of the depressive personality disorder construct in order to facilitate deciding whether or not to include depressive personality disorder in future editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The overlap of depressive personality disorder and dysthymia, reconsidered.

This paper reviews empirical literature examining the diagnostic overlap of depressive personality disorder and dysthymia. Although some articles have suggested that depressive personality disorder lacks distinctiveness from dysthymia and may be one type of affective disorder, a large proportion of the literature may, in fact, support its distinctiveness as a personality disorder. Additional research is needed to determine the features of the two disorders that best distinguish between them, so that depressive personality disorder can be further evaluated for its validity and usefulness in the diagnostic nomenclature.

Baroreflex responses to the stress of severe hemorrhage in the rat.

In two groups of anesthetized (sodium pentobarbital), mature Sprague-Dawley rats, 1) aged 2 years and weighing 300-400 grams, 2) aged 6 months weighing 200-300 grams, baroreflex-induced circulatory responses to pressor (graded doses phenylephrine) and depressor (graded doses nitroglycerine) agents were compared to those occurring during progressive hemorrhage in the same animals. Graded withdrawals of blood from the femoral artery elicited progressive hypotension accompanied by bradycardia rather than expected tachycardia. Graded doses of phenylephrine (2.5 ug to 40 ug bolus, via femoral vein) regularly induced elevations in arterial blood pressure with associated reflex bradycardia. Similarly graded doses of nitroglycerine induced a marked decline in arterial blood pressure, without expected tachycardia. As hypotension became more severe (during hemorrhage), atrioventricular conduction slowed and A-V block developed, resulting in statistically greater slowing in ventricular than in atrial excitation and contractile cycles. Heart failure during hemorrhage in the rat is characterized sequentially by severe bradycardia, depressed atrial contractile force, impaired conduction and A-V block, terminating in ventricular, atrial, and finally, in pacemaker failure. Baroreceptor reflexes were blunted or even absent in both young and old animals during induced hypotension.

Object loss and object relations in depressive personality analogues.

The author investigated the extent to which self-reported early object loss and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) measures of object relations differentiated individuals with a depressive personality from dysthymic persons and highly dependent individuals. In an undergraduate analogue sample of 54 students, those with a depressive personality reported a nonsignificantly higher proportion of object loss than did dysthymic and highly dependent participants. Those in the depressive personality and dependent groups had less complex representations of others than did those with dysthymia, and those with a depressive personalitiy and dysthymia tended to view others in a more negative, pessimistic fashion than did the highly dependent individuals. The author concludes that persons with a depressive personality can be identified, in part, by their experience of object loss and their distinctive object relations.

Describing depressive personality analogues and dysthymics on the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) To test Widiger, Trull, Clarkin, Sanderson, and Costa's (1994) description of depressive personalities' profile scores on the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992); and (b) to determine the degree of empirical overlap between depressive personality analogues and dysthymics on the NEO-PI-R. As predicted, depressive personality analogues (DPAs) had significantly higher mean scores on the Anxiety, Depression, and Self-Consciousness NEO-PI-R facets of Neuroticism than did controls, but not on the Tendermindedness facet. On the second question of interest, DPAs and dysthymics significantly differed on the Self-Consciousness and Gregariousness facets and clinically differed on the Neuroticism, Openness, and Agreeableness factors, and on the Angry Hostility, Depression, and Positive Emotions facets. Despite overlap on other factors and facets, it is concluded that DPAs can be meaningfully differentiated from dysthymia on the NEO-PI-R.

The Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory: an initial examination of its psychometric properties.

A 41-item questionnaire was developed to assess cognitions that are representative of the DSM-IV conceptualization of depressive personality disorder. Eighty-nine undergraduates from a private, Midwestern, Catholic university were administered the Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (DPDI), the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS), and the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-Revised (ATQ-R). Results indicated that the DPDI is internally consistent, assesses a single construct, and has construct validity relative to the DAS and ATQ-R. Given these promising initial findings, continued use and refinement of the DPDI are warranted.