Character and temperament features of patients with acne vulgaris

Objective: The purpose of the study is to investigate whether there are associations between common specific personality characteristics, Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) scores, Beck Depression and Anxiety scores in patients with acne vulgaris (AV).

Method: The patients who were diagnosed with AV following the dermatologic examination and the selected healthy control individuals filled the socio-demographic and clinic information form, Beck Depression and Beck Anxiety scales, as well as the TCI.

Results: Patients were significantly higher for their Beck depression and anxiety scores. For TCI subscales; patient group was significantly higher for cooperativeness 3 (C3=helpfulness), cooperativeness total and self-transcendence 2 (ST2=transpersonal identification) subscale scores while they were significantly lower for self directiveness 3 (SD3=resourcefulness) subscale score compared to the control group.

Conclusions: The findings about lower self-transcendence scores of patients group might be related with the difficulties they can experience during the treatment process. Such difficulties might increase the anxiety and depression incidence of the AV patients, worsen the disease severity, decrease the success rate of the treatment. All such negative effects, triggered with treatment non-concurrence, might lead to a vicious cycle that would cause the mismanagement of the whole treatment procedure.