Category: Mental Health

Personality, though, changes how people interpret and deal with the things that happen to them.

People who are extraverted are less likely to suffer mental health problems, personality research finds.

Extraverts are typically outgoing, talkative and energetic and they tend to have more positive emotions.

However, people who are aggressive and neurotic — a tendency to worry and be emotionally unstable — are at higher risk of mental health problems.

Neuroticism is characterised by negative thinking in a range of areas.

Neurotic people are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, as well as drink and drug problems.

Neuroticism, like other aspects of personality, is highly heritable — in other words, it is in a person’s genes.

However, neuroticism can be reduced by psychotherapy.

Neurotic people can learn to think differently, use their neuroticism creatively and perhaps reduce their neuroticism by falling in love.

The conclusions come from almost 600 participants in Switzerland.

They were regularly interviewed from the age of around 19 in 1979, until they were in their fifties in 2008.

The researchers asked them about their families, mental health, personality, any problems with drugs and major life events like relationship break-ups, job losses and so on.

People who are aggressive, neurotic and introverted are particularly at risk, the study’s authors write:

“…persons scoring high on aggressiveness and neuroticism and low on extraversion had an approximately 6 times increased risk for internalising disorder [like depression and anxiety] compared to persons scoring low on aggressiveness and neuroticism and high on extraversion.”

Of course, personality is only one factor that affects whether a person might experience a mental health problem.

Some people’s lives are much more difficult than others.

The researchers found that people who experienced job losses and relationship break-ups were more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

Personality, though, changes how people interpret and deal with the things that happen to them.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Our findings stress the fundamental role of personality, mainly neuroticism, for the occurrence, persistence and severity of psychopathology.”

The study was published in the journal European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (Hengartner et al., 2017).

This personality type affects around one in six people in the US.

People with personality disorders are at double the risk of developing mental health problems by 35-years-old, research finds.

People with personality disorders are more likely to be socially disadvantaged, separated or divorced.

By 35, people with personality disorders are almost twice as likely to be experiencing depression and/or anxiety.

Personality disorders affect around one in six people in the US.

The three most common personality disorders in the US are:

1. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
2. Paranoid personality disorder.
3. Antisocial personality disorder

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is one of the most well-known of personality disorders

Those with OCPD are typically perfectionists who are also highly fearful or anxious.

They want to control everything and find it very hard to relax.

In contrast, those with a paranoid personality disorder are extremely mistrustful of others.

They are very sensitive and are always on the lookout for things that confirm their worst fears: that everyone is out to get them.

They assume others are hostile, they bear grudges and find it hard to have an emotional connection with others.

Finally, people with an antisocial personality disorder typically have no regard for other people’s feelings or judgments.

They see themselves as free of society’s rules and standards and are similar to what we think of as a psychopath.

→ More details on how to spot personality disorders.

Dr Paul Moran, who led the Australian study of 1,520 people, said:

“At the age of 24, personality disorder was already linked with social disadvantage, substance misuse and poor mental health.

Eleven years later, the presence of personality pathology predicted the occurrence of anxiety and depression, as well as the absence of long-term relationships.

What is most striking is that these associations were not due to pre-existing mental health, substance use or social problems.

People with personality disorder appear to be a distinctly vulnerable group with regards to future mental health and relationship problems.”

The study was published in the The Lancet Psychiatry (Moran et al., 2016).