ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Mood Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1596956
Unraveling Personality in Mood Disorders: The Role of Big Five Personality Traits in Han Chinese Women with Bipolar and Unipolar Depression
Provisionally accepted
- 1Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
- 2School of The First Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China
- 3Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China
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Background Personality traits are closely related to psychiatric disorders, but their role in distinguishing major depressive disorder (DD) from bipolar disorder (BD) remains unclear. The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is widely used to assess personality, yet findings on trait differences between BD and MDD and their relationship with clinical features are inconsistent. This study examines how personality traits vary across mood disorders and their associations with clinical features.Objective This study aims to investigate how Big Five personality traits differ between major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) and to explore their associations with clinical characteristics, including illness severity, hospitalization history, and comorbidities, in a sample of Han Chinese women.Methods A cross-sectional analysis was conducted on BD, MDD, and healthy participants. Personality traits were assessed using the Chinese version of BFI-44, and clinical data including depression severity (HAMD scores), hospitalization history, and comorbidities were collected. Multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and structural equational model (SEM) were used to examine group differences and associations between personality and clinical variables.Results BD and MDD patients exhibited higher neuroticism than healthy controls (p<0.001). BD patients had lower agreeableness than MDD (β=-0.14, p=0.04), while extraversion did not significantly differentiate the disorders. BD-I patients had higher openness than BD-II (M=2.78, p=0.02) and higher conscientiousness than BD-NOS (M=3.51, p=0.03). Higher openness correlated with physical comorbidities (β = 0.19, p = 0.01), and neuroticism was strongly linked to depression severity (β = 0.26, p < 0.001).Neuroticism is a key marker of psychiatric illness, while agreeableness distinguishes BD from MDD. The associations between personality, illness severity, and treatment engagement highlight their potential clinical relevance and need for further study.
Keywords: Big Five personality, Mood disorder, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, personality traits
Received: 20 Mar 2025; Accepted: 16 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Gan, He, Yang, Wu, Zhu and Gan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhaoyu Gan, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
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