Stress coping and personality traits in acute depression and after improvement

There is increasing evidence that coping strategies (CS), i.e., the individual way to cope with stress are involved in the development and course of depression and that less-adaptive CS are related to less-adaptive personality traits.We investigated 56 depressed inpatients during hospitalisation, and 25 of them additionally one year after discharge. We evaluated CS with the Streßverarbeitungsfragebogen (SVF; Janke et al., 1985) and personality traits with the Neo-Fünf-Faktoren-Inventar (NEO-FFI; Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993). On admission 37 inpatients used less-adaptive CS such as resignation or self-incrimination and only one subject used positive CS. At discharge we found a significant change with a reduced rate of less-adaptive CS although we observed no association with a reduction of depressive symptoms measured with the Hamilton Depression Scale. The Personality traits didn’t change during hospitalisation or follow-up. Neuroticism and extraversion were correlated with negative coping on admission, at discharge, and also at the one-year follow-up. However, these two personality factors were also correlated with positive coping on admission and at the follow-up. We found no correlation between CS and age of onset or the number of previous depressive episodes. These findings are consistent with the view that the assessment of CS is affected by the current psychopathological condition and should be evaluated after improvement in order to gain unbiased information.