The Myers Briggs Type Indicator and psychiatric diagnosis

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a Jungian based personality survey instrument, which is widely used in business, management, counseling, and educational circles. Its preference types correlate with the corresponding scales on the NEO-PI, which have been shown to be significantly genetically determined. Thus, the MBTI, if distinct in a given psychiatric diagnosis, may reflect underlying genetic/biologic variables. The MBTI divides individuals into eight preference types: Extroverted and Introverted, Sensing or Intuitive, Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceiving. Application of the MBTI to clinical psychiatry has been virtually non-existent. In the current study, we evaluated a total of 123 psychiatric patients with a variety of diagnoses, and 17 outpatients with Social Phobia. All patients were assigned DSM II-R diagnoses. We especially focused on differences between Affective Disorder patients and others. We found that significantly higher numbers of patients with Major Depressive Disorder than in normative populations were introverted, sensing and feeling types. In contrast, Bipolar patients (most of whom were depressed), while similar to patients with Major Depression with respect to being introverted, feeling types, consisted predominantly of intuitive, as opposed to sensing types. In addition, patients who had both Major Depressive Disorder and Substance Abuse diagnoses had profiles which were very similar to patients who had Major Depressive Disorder alone. Also, we noted that Social Phobia patients showed extreme introversion, and were often judging types when compared to the Affective Disorder and Substance Abuse patients. The above findings may have implications for understanding the psychopathology of major mental disorders, and may have specific therapeutic and diagnostic implications.