IF YOU'RE the type of person who mutters to yourself: "You idiot, why can't you do anything right?" or if you avoid conflict in a relationship because you can't stand the thought of being alone, you could be a prime candidate for depression, according to York University psychology professor Myriam Mongrain. She's found that people with personality traits of self-criticism and dependency, especially those with both, are particularly prone to feeling depressed.
Dependent people "desperately need others to maintain a sense of well-being," says Mongrain. "They're terribly afraid of abandonment." While wanting to be connected to others is not a bad thing, she said, such extreme neediness is a pathological aspect of dependency.
Self-critical people set very high standards and berate themselves for failing to meet them. Even when they do succeed, there's an "absence of joy in achievement." While some self-criticism is good, she said there's a difference between pursuing excellence for its own sake and needing to achieve excellence to maintain a sense of adequacy.
Mongrain set out to discover how these personality traits influence depression. Dependent and self-critical people get depressed for different reasons, she said. "They experience stressors differently and find meaning in different things."
She asked undergraduate students to fill out a questionnaire that identified dependent and self-critical traits. The experimental group consisted of women, who participated with their boyfriends. They were in long-term relationships, averaging more than a year. (Dependent and self-critical men were not examined because fewer filled out the questionnaire.) The couples engaged in a conflict-resolution task, which was videotaped and later coded for behaviour representing dominance, submissiveness, lovingness and hostility. Afterwards, they filled out a questionnaire to assess their mood.
Mongrain found that self-critical women were more likely be feeling depressed and were more dissatisfied with their relationship than subjects in other groups. They were also more hostile and less loving towards their boyfriends, a pattern which partners reciprocated. She said it's difficult to tell whether the men's hostility was caused by the women's critical attitudes or existed before the relationships started. (People with a negative self-image often seek out partners who reinforce their feelings of unworthiness.)
Mongrain hopes her research will help people recognize how personality traits contribute to depression.
Illustration: Celia Calle
