Personality’s effect on mental health

Personality’s effect on mental health,can they be harming you, or is your personality actually helping you live a longer life? Our personalities play such an important role in determining our behaviours and habits, so it is little wonder that personality traits affect your health. Everything from how often you visit the doctor to how you deal with stress is connected to your personality.

For a long time philosophers , physicians, and researchers have tried to find connections between personality and health. During the Greek period, Hippocrates suggested that the four humors or personality types were connected to susceptibilities for certain physical or mental illnesses.

Interest in the topic of personality’s effect on mental health is still persistent today and research has found that personality traits can be health predictors. Where researchers found that personality traits exhibited during childhood are linked to later health.
So , personality’s effect on mental health,how? Let’s take a closer look at a few common personality types or traits and find out how they can affect your health .

Personality’s effect on mental health has been something researchers have been trying to figure out for quite sometime. The ‘Big five ‘or Five Factor Model consist of five traits namely neuroticism , openness, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Big five or the five factor model and how these personality’s effect on mental health

The “Big Five or The Five Factor Model’’ of personality includes five major dimensions that describe individual differences in personality. In the “Handbook of Personality,” Oliver .P .John , Ph.D., professor at University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues described the five major personality dimensions

Openness to experience — describes an individual’s mental and experiential life and the tendency to be imaginative, creative and original

Conscientiousness — describes socially prescribed impulse control (i.e., thinking before acting, delaying gratification, following the rules, etc.) and the tendency to be organized, persistent and reliable

Extraversion — tendency to be warm, sociable, active, emotionally positive and cheerful

Agreeableness — the energetic approach toward the social and material world and includes traits of interpersonal relatedness (e.g., altruism, trust, modesty, cooperativeness)

Neuroticism — contrasts emotional stability with negative emotionality and the tendency to experience negative emotions (i.e., feeling anxious, sad and tense)

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is a specific personality trait that has been associated with an increased vulnerability for mental health problems. This is because individuals who are high in neuroticism often tend to feel anxious, nervous, sad and tense, and are emotionally sensitive and highly self-critical, and exhibit heightened needs for approval and achievement.

For example, studies have found that young people who are high on neuroticism are more likely to develop anxiety, substance use and depressive disorders.

Neuroticism involves experiencing negative emotions – fear, sadness, guilt, anger, envy – on a regular basis. If you recognize these tendencies in yourself, don’t be discouraged. Personalities can change to a certain extent and many people use coping strategies to reduce the impact of negativity on their daily lives and long-term mental health.

Research currently says that…

Certain personality traits have also been associated with substance use. A study conducted by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that people who used tobacco, cocaine and heroin exhibited lower scores on conscientiousness and higher scores on neuroticism, while those who used marijuana scored high on openness to experience, average on neuroticism, but low on agreeableness and conscientiousness

This study highlighted the importance of certain personality’s effect on mental health on drug use, especially the association between high levels of negative affect and impulsive traits, and low conscientiousness and agreeableness.

In general, patients with personality disorders tend to exhibit low frustration tolerance, externalize blame for psychological distress and have impaired impulse control, which makes them more prone to high-risk behaviours and mental health problems.

They fall on a continuum, just like intelligence. It’s important to realize that personality’s effect on mental health are a matter of degree, says Dr. Roman Kotov, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at Stony Brook School of Medicine in New York.

In 2010, Kotov and colleagues evaluated 175 studies to explore personality’s effect on mental health(connection between personality traits depression, anxiety and substance use disorders). Low levels of extraversion – in other words, introversion – and social phobia were tied to major depressive and anxiety disorders.

Disinhibition, which involves impulsiveness and lack of regard for social norms, and disagreeableness were connected to developing substance use disorders. Across the board, neuroticism was the personality pattern most often related to mental health disorders in the review, published in the Psychological Bulletin.

Compared to physical traits like brain size or height, genetic influence on personality’s effect on mental health is relatively low, Chen emphasizes. “So even with innate genetic predispositions to tend to be neurotic, life experience can protect you from developing more serious disorders like depression or anxiety,” she says.

It’s also important to point out that each gene related to neuroticism individually carries very little risk of developing neurotic personality. Chen says, As with most human traits, “there may be hundreds or thousands of genes related to neuroticism.” “If someone carries a few of these genes, it doesn’t mean this person will develop neurotic personality.” For someone carrying more of these genes, putting them at higher genetic risk, she says, “adverse environmental factors could trigger development of neurotic personality or mental illness.”

Avoiding or reducing stress, practicing positive thinking and being in socially supportive surroundings provide a buffer against negative influences, It’s is said that “Through experience, education and environment the people around you a lot of things can be changed.”
Note that there’s no overlap between personality’s effect on mental health and cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. And there is only modest crossover between emotional traits like neuroticism and behavioural disorders like ADHD.

Even when personality’s effect on mental health can make people more prone to developing mental disorders, many other factors determine whether that escalation occurs. Hormonal changes, accidents and stressful events play a role. Age does, too. For instance, Kotov says, a teen with high levels of introversion would be at higher risk than a similar middle-aged adult who has found ways to cope and succeed.

Kotov says neuroticism could be present like a survival strategy ,where people with too much of neuroticism may end up taking too many risks , such as suffering accidents when carelessly crossing the street or jumping into in unreliable financial ventures.

Some neurotic people may be more prone to possible threats if they work in Jon atmospheres where the colleagues are backstabbing than reliable and friendly . If it’s the former, some neuroticism might be appropriate. But at extreme points, neuroticism becomes maladaptive, when fears, discouragement, jealousy and simmering anger become a burden, affecting what people do and limiting their lives.

You can control or keep in check certain personality’s effect on mental health like anger. Talk therapy, medications and coping strategies can help keep continued annoyance and irritation from progressing to outright explosiveness. People with high hostility levels “aren’t necessarily getting into major problems like bar fights or getting fired”. “But they can get provoked and lose control.”

With counselling,personality’s effects on mental health,like someone struggling with a short temper could gain a new perspective on other people’s actions. He or she could learn to see grey areas and be less likely to lash out. Basically, it’s about dealing with one’s emotions in ways that aren’t ineffective. While it’s not really shielding you , it’s thought that managing unhelpful personality traits now promotes better mental health later on in life .