Introduction: The personality is one of the reasons for creation and persistence of mood disorder. However, there is little researches that have studied Cloninger's personality profile in patients with major depression, bipolar I and normal people. The purpose of this study was to compare the temperament and character personality dimensions based on Cloninger's theory in patients with major depressive disorder, bipolar I and normal people.

Materials & methods: In this causal-comparative study, 34 patients with Major Depressive disorder and 37 patients with Bipolar I disorder with psychiatric case from supportive and outpatient centers of social welfare office of Azerbaijan Gharbi Province were selected by available sampling method. Also, 79 people from healthy clients with case as financial case in social welfare office after screening by general health test were selected by available sampling method. Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) were used to collect data. ANOVA and Tukey tests (HSD) were used for data analyses.

Findings: The results showed that there are significant differences among three groups in the Novelty Seeking (NS), Harm avoidance (HA), and Persistence (P). In the character dimensions, three groups have significant difference in Self-directedness (SD), Cooperativeness (C) and Self-transcendence (ST). HSD test results showed that there are significant differences between depressive and normal groups in Novelty Seeking (p<0/05), Persistence (p<0/01) and Self-transcendence (p<0/05), and in Self-directedness (p<0/01), and Harm avoidance (p<0/01) between depressive and normal group, as well as, between Bipolar I and normal group. In Cooperativeness variable (p<0/01) there is significant differences among all groups.

Discussion & Conclusions: These results suggest that Novelty Seeking (NS), Persistence (P), Self-transcendence (ST) and Cooperativeness (C) are characteristics of depressive patients, in addition, Harm avoidance (HA) and Self-directedness (SD) are characteristics of patients with MDD and BD I.