Personality Vulnerability to Depression and Stress Processes

Beck and Blatt's congruency theories are examples of the diathesis-stress model proposed to explain the role of personality in vulnerability to depression. However, Bolger and Zuckerman suggested a more general framework concerning the role of personality in stress encounters. Thus, an integration of these two lines of theorizing and research seems warranted. This book provides a new way of conceptualizing and studying personality vulnerabilities to depression by focusing on their stress-generation and stress-reactive characteristics, and their differential coping choices and coping effectiveness. A two-week prospective design with daily recordings of life events, appraisal, coping, affect, and cognition provided the basis for data collection. This work adds to the growing recognition that some personality styles might confer specific vulnerabilities whereas others might be more general, tackles the role of the stress-generation effects of personality vulnerabilities in the diathesis-stress research on depression, and should be useful to mental health professionals, researchers, and graduate students interested in the field of stress and depression.