The association of compliance to treatment with temperament and character features in patients with major depression

ABSTRACT Ülkü Beşiktepe. The Association of Compliance to Treatment with Temperament and Character Features in Patients with Major Depression. Bülent Ecevit University, Faculty of Medicine, Thesis of Psychiatry. Zonguldak, 2013. Major depression (MD), can be seen at any age, is a mental disease that negatively affects bio-psycho-social environment of the person. The personality, one of the features that affect the clinical course of depression, can be a variable that can be used for determination of the course of the disease. In patients with MD, treatment methods and predictive responses to the treatment are also important. Many studies have investigated the temperament features to predict the response of MD with antidepressants. In the present study, it was aimed to examine temperament and character features with Temperament Character Inventory (TCI) to predict the compliance and response to treatment in MD; to determine the compliance rate to the suggested antidepressant therapy in depressive patients; to discuss the factors affect the compliance to therapy with comparing clinical and socio-demographic characteristics of the patients either with or without compliance to therapy, and to investigate the association of them with the response. In the literature, prize search and self-directedness (SD) scores were observed to be lower and harm avoidance (HA) score was found to be higher in patients with MD. In our study, novelty seeking (NS), HA and SD scores were found to be significantly higher in the patient group. In the studies, it was reported that response to the treatment could be better predicted in patients with low HA, high reward dependence (RD), high cooperativeness (C) and high SD scores. In the present study, personality features were similar in terms of response and compliance to the treatment. NS scores were found to be higher in men than women in the patient group. The incidence of psychiatric disorders was higher in the families of the patients. İn the present study, it was found that there were predictive effects of parameters of NS, HA, and S of TCI on predisposition to MD. We consider that there is a need for larger studies with higher number of patients and longer follow-up duaration for determination of the factors affecting the compliance and response to the treatment. Despite the limitations such as the short duration of follow-up treatment and lack of studies conducted about the validity of TCI on MD, the preliminary data obtained from the present study makes us consider that future trials focused on the prediction of TCI about the clinical course of the disease will be valuable. Keywords: Major depression, compliance to treatment, temperament and character, TCI