Personality dimensions in patients with CFS who were depressed compared to patients with depressive illness

In this study 170 psychiatric outpatients and 399 community-based adults completed a Dutch translation of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Factor structure, internal consistency and relationship with age and psychiatric status were investigated. Also comparisons were made between the TCI scores of the Dutch community sample and Cloninger’s US normative data. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the relationship between subscales and their corresponding personality domain. Both the result of our patient and normal control group indicated a high similarity with the seven theoretical dimensions of Cloninger’s biosocial model of personality. The internal consistencies of the seven scales were remarkably comparable, both across patient and normal samples, and across culturally different samples of normal volunteers. The most conspicuous difference between the Dutch normal sample and Cloninger’s normative sample was a much lower Self-Transcendence score for our sample. As a whole the patient group had lower Self-Directedness and Cooperativeness and higher Harm-Avoidance scores than the normal controls. The findings of this study suggest that the TCI can be applied in the investigation of psychiatric and normal populations.