Psychiatric and psychological features of children at high-risk for bipolar disorder

Abstract

Background: Psychological/psychiatric features of high risk children (HR) for bipolar disorder are majorly overlooked. We aimed to compare psychological profiles (eg. anger level/management, attachment/stress-coping mechanisms and emotional regulation difficulties) of HR with healthy controls. Method: Total of 60 children in HR and 55 children in control group were evaluated using Trait Anger Scale (TAS), Anger Expression Scale (AES), Inventory of Parent/Peer Attachment (IPPA), Coping Style Scale (CSS) and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Results: AXE/In and AXE/Con subscales of AES, "trust" and "communication" facets of IPPA-Peer and "communication" facet of IPPA-Parent were significantly lower in HR. They scored higher in "helpless" and lower in "submissive" and "optimistic" subscales of CSS. HR scored higher only in "lack of emotional awareness" facet of DERS. Limitations: Self-reported scales which we used, may be susceptible to subjective personal characteristics. Also cross-sectional design of our study may have captured only a fraction of rapidly changing developmental processes. Conclusions: Lower AXE/In and AXE/Con scores of HR are similar to Type-A Behavior Pattern which is includes agressiveness and impulsiveness. Higher "helpless", and lower "submissive" and "optimistic" scores may reflect emotionally disregulated coping mechanisms which may lead to the risk of developing future depressive episodes. Lower "communication" in IPPA may show a disturbance in executive function of language. Lack of emotional awareness can be examined in line with alexithymia; but further studies are needed to explain these aspects.