Resilience and personality in psychiatric inpatients

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to identify relationships between the concept of resilience and the psychobiological model that treats the dimensions of temperament and character as representative of innate and environmental factors, respectively, among psychiatric inpatients whose diseases have acquired chronicity.

METHODS: The study involved 171 psychiatric inpatient volunteers. The Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA), the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), and the Symptom Checklist90, revised version, were used. Pearson correlation analyses and multiple regression analyses were performed to identify relationships between resilience and the other variables examined.

RESULTS: We found a negative correlation between resilience and novelty seeking (NS) and harm avoidance (HA), but no correlation was found between resilience and self transcendence (ST) (respectively, r:−0.26, p < 0.01; r:−0.45, p < 0.01; r:−0.07, p > 0.05). There were positive correlations between resilience and the other temperament and character dimensions (respectively, r:0.14, p > 0.05; r:0.29, p < 0.01; r:0.56, p < 0.01; r:0.37, p < 0.01). The TCI dimensions of persistence (P), self-directedness (SD), and ST (F:7.3, df:7, p < 0.01, adj.R2 :0.16) predicted resilience.

CONCLUSION: There are significant relationships between resilience and personality dimensions in chronic psychiatric patients. Our results indicate that, consistent with Cloninger’s model, both environment (i.e. character dimensions) and genetic endowment (i.e. temperament dimensions) contribute to resilience, which involves lower levels of HA and higher levels of P and SD in psychiatric inpatients whose diseases have acquired chronicity.