The effort of maintaining the defensive wall: is there a link between defense mechanisms and vitality?

BACKGROUND: Vitality - the sensation of energy availability and lack of fatigue - is a transdiagnostic factor playing a role in various psychiatric disorders. Defense mechanisms are strategies individuals use to deal with internal or external stress and can be categorized by their degree of adaptiveness, summarized as defensive maturity. Immature defense mechanisms involve awareness inhibition, which is assumed to be an energy-demanding process contributing to reduced vitality. In this study, we examine whether defense mechanisms are associated with vitality. METHODS: A transdiagnostic sample of 200 participants (100 with and 100 without psychiatric disorders) was analyzed in a cross-sectional design. Defensive maturity and mature and immature defense mechanisms were assessed using the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scale-Self-Report-30. Vitality was measured using the vigor and fatigue subscales of the Profile of Mood States. RESULTS: In line with our hypotheses, defensive maturity and immature defense mechanisms were associated with vitality (r = .31, p < .001 and r = - .27, p < .001, respectively), even after adjusting for sleep quality (β = 0.20, p = .004 and β = - 0.16, p = .023, respectively). Additional analyses that accounted for both mature and immature mechanisms revealed that only immature defense mechanisms (β = - 0.32, p < .001), but not mature (β = - 0.07, p = .356), predicted vitality. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that primarily immature defense mechanisms are related to impaired vitality. This is in line with the assumption that inhibiting thoughts or emotions is an energy-demanding process. Alternatively, a lack of energy availability may impair defense maturity. Targeting immature defense mechanisms in psychotherapeutic interventions may improve vitality as a transdiagnostic factor in a variety of psychiatric disorders in which fatigue is an accompanying symptom. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was registered on 2022-07-30 on https://clinicaltrials.gov/ (identifier: NCT05544877).