Some personalities are more prone to mood disorders than others and treatment of mood disorders is more difficult in the setting of personality disorders.

Many boots of depression attacks are without major life events. Personality disordered persons show earlier attacks of mood disorders in their life with a tendency to treatment resistance and early recurrence designing a model on mutual interaction of mood and personality might be very fruitful.

To find more practical risk factors for chronic depression and improving the prognosis of these patients.

Three hundred and fifty nine patients with major depression were evaluated with the MCMI-III and Hamilton's depression scale at diagnosis and 12 and 24 weeks after medical treatment. Two sixty patients group with comparable personalities were compared for receiving personality guided therapy or not.

Personality disordered patients have a double chance of developing major depression during their lifetime as compared to normal persons as exemplified by their reference to our center. Hamilton's depression scale was reduced significantly more in personality normal patients than their disordered counterpart (p< 0.04). Those who received personality guided therapy fared also much better after 12 and 24 weeks after treatment.

We conclude that personality is a major risk factor both in developing depression and in reduced responsiveness to conventional treatments. Patients with premorbid personalities should receive more intensive drug therapy in addition to personality guided therapies. Personality acts both cis (in the same side) and trans (in the opposite side) of mood.