Age, Gender and Disorder related Personality characteristics of Pediatric Patients Measured by eysenck Personality Questionnaire

The study of personality is important not only for psychology and related disciplines, but also in clinical practice. The starting point in this article is Eysenck theory of personality, based primarily on genetics and physiology which corresponds to the tem¬perament. Main categories of temperament for eysenck are extroversion vs. introversion, neuroticism vs. stability and psychoticism vs.socialisation. In this article, we tried to analyze personality characteristics of eight groups of children and adolescents applying eysenck personality Questionnaire (EPQ). EPQ is a 90-item scale for assessing per¬sonality in children and adolescents yielding four scales: extroversion (E), Neuroticism (N), psychoticism (p) and socialization/Lie scale (L). The examined sample comprised: a) group with mental anorexia; b) group with rheumatoid arthritis; c) patients with cystic fibrosis; d) neurotic patients; e) patients with tension type headache; f) pa¬tients with malignancies (leukemia or solid tumors); g) children with psychosomatic problems; f) 10 boys with ticks and h) healthy children, as a control group. Total number of examinees was N = 216 (90 girls, 126 boys). It was shown that EPQ is good choice for differentiation of the main personality traits in children which help in the assessment procedure measuring extroversion, neurotic and psychopathologic traits which is useful for planning treatment options.