The belief that being high is a natural part of your personality predicts an increase in manic symptoms over time in bipolar disorder

Abstract

Background: several psychological models of bipolar disorder propose that certain types of appraisals can lead to increases in manic symptoms.
Aims: We tested whether the belief that being ‘high’ is a natural part of one’s personality correlates with manic symptoms four months later when controlling for manic symptoms at baseline.

Method: a prospective four-month follow-up design using self-report measures. Forty people with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder completed a measure of manic symptoms, a measure of appraisals associated with bipolar disorder, and a single-item measure, “To what extent do you feel like being ‘high’ is a natural part of your personality”, at baseline and follow up.

Results: the single-item measure showed modest stability over time and construct validity in its correlation with a standardised measure of appraisals in bipolar disorder. As predicted, the single-item measure correlated with manic symptoms at follow up when controlling for manic symptoms at baseline.

Conclusions: the belief that being ‘high’ is a natural part of one’s personality is a potential predictor of manic symptoms. Further research needs to study the potential mediating mechanisms such as activating behaviours, and control for indicators of the bipolar endophenotype.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Thomas Richardson: orcid.org/0000-0002-5357-4281

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