Background. To examine the effects of temperament and character domains on depression during pregnancy. Methods. We examined 601 pregnant women using a questionnaire that included the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), and demographic variables. Results. In a hierarchical regression analysis, severity of depression during pregnancy was predicted by the women’s negative response towards the current pregnancy, low self-directedness, and high harm avoidance, persistence, and self-transcendence. Conclusion. Depression during pregnancy is predicted by personality traits as well as women’s negative attitudes towards the current pregnancy. 1. Introduction The World Mental Health Survey [1], conducted in 17 countries, found that on average about one in 20 people reported having had an episode of depression. The prevalence of depression among women is two to three times higher than that among men. Depression is one of the most serious health problems among women [2], with younger women affected more frequently than middle-age women [3]. Personality is one of the major factors associated with depression [4–7]. Personality traits predict the course and treatment response of depression [8]. Cloninger et al. [9] proposed a psychobiological model that included both temperament and character domains. According to their theory, the temperament domain consists of four dimensions: harm avoidance (HA), novelty seeking (NS), reward dependence (RD), and persistence (PS). The character domain consists of three dimensions: self-directedness (SD), cooperativeness (CO), and self-transcendence (ST). As a measure of these dimensions, they developed the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) [10]. Many studies have used the TCI to explore the relationship between depression on the one hand and temperament and character dimensions on the other. Most of these studies demonstrated that individuals with depressive disorder or depression were more likely to have high HA and low SD and CO [6, 7, 11–16]. No consensus, however, has been reached regarding the relationship between PS and depression. While some researchers [12, 17–19] have reported high PS among those with depression, others have found low PS among those with depression [7, 20, 21], depressive disorder [22, 23], and bipolar disorder [22, 24–26]. It is of interest to us that PS was reported to be low among individuals with postpartum depression [27]. Depression that appears during pregnancy is called antenatal depression. The prevalence of this condition has been
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