A Big Five Personality Typology in Adolescents with Congenital Heart Disease: Prospective Associations with Psychosocial Functioning and Perceived Health.

PURPOSE

This study aimed (1) to identify different personality types in adolescents with congenital heart disease (CHD), and (2) to relate these personality types to psychosocial functioning and several domains of perceived health, both concurrently and prospectively. Hence, this study aimed to expand previous research by adopting a person-centered approach to personality through focusing on personality types rather than singular traits.

METHOD

Adolescents with CHD were selected from the database of pediatric and congenital cardiology of the University Hospitals Leuven. A total of 366 adolescents (15-20 years old) with CHD participated at time 1. These adolescents completed questionnaires on the Big Five personality traits, depressive symptoms, loneliness, and generic and disease-specific domains of health. Nine months later, 313 patients again completed questionnaires.

RESULTS

Cluster analysis at time 1 revealed three personality types: resilients (37 %), undercontrollers (34 %), and overcontrollers (29 %), closely resembling typologies obtained in previous community samples. Resilients, under-, and overcontrollers did not differ in terms of disease complexity, but differed on depressive symptoms, loneliness, and generic and disease-specific domains of perceived health at both time-points. Overall, resilients showed the most favorable outcomes and overcontrollers the poorest, with undercontrollers scoring in-between.

CONCLUSION

Personality assessment can help clinicians in identifying adolescents at risk for physical and psychosocial difficulties later in time. In this study, both over- and undercontrollers were identified as high-risk groups. Our findings show that both personality traits and types should be taken into account to obtain a detailed view on the associations between personality and health.