Open Access

ARTICLE

The Relationship between Mental Disorders and Personality of Outpatients in a Psychiatric Clinic in Nanjing, China

by Yiteng Zang¹, Biyun Xu², Sizhen Chen¹, Grace Mutale¹, Qiuyun Cao^3,*, Bingwei Chen^1,*

1 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210009, China
2 Medical Statistics and Analysis Center, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, 210008, China
3 Department of Clinical Psychology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, 210008, China

* Corresponding Authors: Qiuyun Cao. Email: ; Bingwei Chen. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Mental Health and Social Development)

International Journal of Mental Health Promotion 2023, 25(12), 1287-1302. https://doi.org/10.32604/ijmhp.2023.042584

Received 05 June 2023; Accepted 06 September 2023; Issue published 29 December 2023

Abstract

Psychosis has increasingly become a social problem, emphasizing the need to understand the relationship between mental disorders and personality. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between mental disorders and personality among psychiatric outpatients based on real-world data. Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) were used to evaluate the personality and psychopathological symptoms of patients (n = 8409) in the Psychiatric Outpatient Department at Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital. t-test was used to compare scores between patients and national norms. Pearson’s correlation coefficient and path analysis were used to explore the relationship between mental health status and personality. The correlation coefficient between the neuroticism (N) score and each factor score of the SCL-90 test, as well as the correlation between psychoticism (P) and hostility and paranoia, exceeded 0.4. Path analysis revealed that the standardized path coefficients of N score and SCL-90 were all higher than 0.4. In addition, the standardized path coefficient of hostility and paranoia on P score were 0.313 and 0.280, respectively. Interpersonal sensitivity, depression and obsessive-compulsive symptoms were affected by extraversion (E) score, with standardized path coefficients of −0.149, −0.138, and −0.105, respectively. The path analysis also showed the direct and indirect effects of age, gender, education, and marital status on SCL-90. Patients characterized as melancholic had higher scores in all factors of SCL-90. In conclusion, mental health was related to personality traits of neuroticism, psychoticism and introversion.

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Keywords

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