Background: There is strong evidence to suggest that personality factors may interact with the development and clinical expression of panic disorder (PD). A greater understanding of these relationships may have important implications for clinical practice and implications for searching reliable predictors of treatment outcome.
Aims: The study aimed to examine the effect of escitalopram treatment on personality traits in PD patients, and to identify whether the treatment outcome could be predicted by any personality trait.
Method: A study sample consisting of 110 outpatients with PD treated with 10-20 mg/day of escitalopram for 12 weeks. The personality traits were evaluated before and after 12 weeks of medication by using the Swedish universities Scales of Personality (SSP).
Results: Although almost all personality traits on the SSP measurement were improved after 12 weeks of medication in comparison with the baseline scores, none of these changes reached a statistically significant level. Only higher impulsivity at baseline SSP predicted non-remission to 12-weeks treatment with escitalopram; however, this association did not withstand the Bonferroni correction in multiple comparisons.
Limitations: All patients were treated in a naturalistic way using an open-label drug, so placebo responses cannot be excluded. The sample size can still be considered not large enough to reveal statistically significant findings.
Conclusions: Maladaptive personality disposition in patients with PD seems to have a trait character and shows little trend toward normalization after 12-weeks treatment with the antidepressant, while the association between impulsivity and treatment response needs further investigation.
Keywords: Panic disorder; Swedish universities Scales of Personality; personality traits; treatment outcome.