SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIORS, SELF-ESTEEM, ANXIETY, AND SOCIAL DESIRABILITY IN PEOPLE WITH PERSONALITY AND MOOD DISORDERS

"Personality and mood disorders impede everyday functioning, cause serious problems with relationships and work. They interfere with everyday situations generating problems with adaptive ways of coping with stress. The rigid and unhealthy way of thinking and behaving characteristic for personality or mood disorders creates many problems relating to situations and people. It also provokes many difficult reactions in response to stress, such as self-destructive behaviors. As it is stated in the literature, self-destructive behaviors are related to self-esteem, social approval, and anxiety level. In the presented study the analysis of relations between data on self-destruction, self-esteem, social desirability, and anxiety level was conducted. A group of 100 respondents, including 79 women, and 21 men age 18-60 (M=31.91; SD=8.22) were asked to fill in set of questionnaires. Among all subjects there were 43 persons without any diagnosis, 22 people with mood disorder diagnosis, and 35 respondents with personality disorders. All diagnosis were conducted by psychiatrists based on ICD-10 diagnostic criteria. The test battery filled in by each subject consisted of Self-Destruction Questionnaire, Self-Esteem Scale, State Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Social Desirability Questionnaire. It was discovered that there is a positive correlation between self-destructive behaviors and anxiety. Negative relationship was found between self-destructive behaviors, self-esteem, and social desirability. Additional analysis concerning the link between personality disorder, repression and/ or sensitization of emotional stimuli uncovered that people diagnosed with personality disorders are more prone to high anxiety level and sensitization of emotional stimuli than are the people without such diagnosis. On the other hand, many people without any clinical diagnosis recruit themselves from repressors group."