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To elucidate the nature of the etiologic relationship between personality and major depression in women.

A longitudinal twin design in which twins completed a time 1 questionnaire and, 15 months later, were personally interviewed for the occurrence of major depression during the last year and completed a time 2 questionnaire. Both questionnaires contained short forms assessing neuroticism and extraversion.

1733 twins from female-female pairs ascertained from the population-based Virginia Twin Registry.

Extraversion was unrelated to lifetime or 1-year prevalence of major depression. Neuroticism was strongly related to lifetime prevalence of major depression and robustly predicted the prospective 1-year prevalence of major depression in those who, at time 1, denied previous depressive episodes. However, controlling for levels of neuroticism at time 1, levels of neuroticism at …