Personality pathology and time to remission in depressed outpatients treated with interpersonal psychotherapy

The present study investigates the relationship between clinical features and time to remission in a population of 76 depressed outpatients treated with interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT). Patients meeting full criteria for borderline personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder were excluded from the study; however, patients with other personality disorder diagnoses were included, as were those with borderline or antisocial features. The only significant predictor of time to remission was the degree of personality pathology. Survival analysis revealed a significant relationship between the number of SIDP-R personality disorder diagnoses and time to remission (p < .01), Patients were also rated as 'high' versus 'low' personality disturbance based on the number of SIDP-R personality traits they exhibited. 'High-disturbance' patients had a median time to stable remission of 28.7 weeks, whereas those classified as 'low disturbance' had a median time to remission of 19.4 weeks (p < .03). We conclude that depressed patients with greater concurrent personality pathology are likely to either respond more slowly to interpersonal psychotherapy or not respond at all.