Euthymia: a neglected aspect of trait depression and its role in predicting subjective well-being

BACKGROUND: Besides its relationship with clinical depression, depressiveness may be conceptualized as a personality trait that includes dysthymia (negative emotional experiences) and euthymia (positive emotional experiences). Euthymia, when reverse scored, makes the construct of trait depression more sensitive to milder levels of depressiveness observed in non-clinical samples. We hypothesised that euthymia is a more important predictor of subjective well-being than dysthymia and this effect is retained when basic positive and negative affect are controlled. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE: Participants were 213 adults (56% females) aged between 19 and 61 (M = 35.85, SD = 11.30). They completed self-report measures of: (a) euthymia and dysthymia as two facets of trait depression, (b) satisfaction with life, and (c) positive and negative affect. RESULTS: The results showed that positive affect and euthymia contributed independently to explaining the variance of satisfaction with life, but the predictive role of euthymia was stronger. In contrast, dysthymia turned out not to predict satisfaction with life when controlled for basic affect and euthymia. CONCLUSIONS: Theoretical implications of the results are discussed with their applications for counselling and clinical practice. We point to the need of monitoring the level of euthymia in the prevention programmes against depression, which is in line with the well-established role of positive interventions in psychotherapy and counselling.