SERVET KAÇAR BAŞARAN
Journal of Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy and Research - 2023;12(3):221-230
The role of perfectionism and neuroticism personality traits in the emergence and maintenance of major depressive disorder (MDD) has been investigated in different studies and in various sample groups for many years. Recently, it is known that these two personality traits play an active role in the treatment of different psychopathologies. However, although the effect of both perfectionism and neuroticism on the emergence of major depression symptoms has been examined in many scientific studies, no research has been found in the literature examining the effect of the interaction of these two personality traits on depressive symptoms. Therefore, in this study, the moderating effect of perfectionism on the relationship between neuroticism and depressive symptoms was investigated. The sample of the study consists of 90 participants who were only diagnosed with major depression according to DSM-5. The diagnoses of the participants were decided by the evaluation made in line with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5) following the diagnosis/pre-diagnosis of the specialist psychiatrist. Short-Form Five Factor Personality Inventory Emotional Instability Dimension, Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale and Beck Depression Inventory were used as data collection tools in our study. In order to examine whether perfectionism has a moderator effect, moderator variable analysis was performed via the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program PROCESS Macro extension According to the results; perfectionism has a moderating effect on the relationship between neuroticism and depressive symptoms. In other words, the interaction of neuroticism and perfectionism personality traits affects the depressive levels of individuals, and when both neuroticism and perfectionism levels increase, the depressive levels of individuals increase even more. These findings emphasize the importance of considering neuroticism and perfectionism personality traits together in reducing depressive symptoms.
