Affective personality expressed in psychiatric patients

Abstract: In Study I, the influence of an affective personality type upon psychological health was examined in 100 psychiatric patients. Factors predicting positive and negative affect were studied in a comparison of the patients with a healthy norm group of 1925 individuals. The patient group showed strong associations between affective personality, energy, optimism and self-reported health as well as stress indisposition. Positive affect was predicted significantly from dispositional optimism whereas stress was counter-predictive. Negative affect was predicted significantly from stress, whereas dispositional optimism, energy and pulse rate were counter-productive. Within both populations, individuals expressing the self-fulfilling affective profiles showed healthiest profiles compared with those expressing self-destructive affective profiles. The patients differed markedly from the norm group with regard to all health variables. Stress appears less detrimental for health in comparison to negative affect itself which is expressed by a self-destructed symptom profile. In Study II the aim was to study to what extent affective state and mood are predictive of the stress experience. The study examined the relationship of affective status, mood and stress in both a psychiatric patient group and a healthy volunteer group, as well as evidence of a gender effect. One hundred patients treated within general psychiatry aged 21–71 years and 101 healthy volunteers aged 20–67 years participated. Clinical instruments, including Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA), Stress and Energy (SE), Dispositional optimism (LOT), Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale (CPRS) self rating scale and the DSM-IV and ICD-10 Personality Questionnaire (DIP-Q) were used. Psychiatric disease had a detrimental effect on Stress, Energy and Optimism. The results indicated that stress was predicted by NA and that PA was counter-predictive for stress. Men and women were affected differently with NA predicting stress both for men and woman whereas DIP-Q general criteria was predictive only for stress among men and PA was counter-predicted for stress among men. Stress as dependent variable was not significantly predicted by either DIP-Q general criteria, CPRS-depression, CPRS-compulsion and CPRS-anxiety. Stress was predicted by negative affect and counter-predicted by positive affect. The data suggest that negative affect was the most important item predicting stress. The healthy controls were less affected by stress.