Avaliação de personalidade em transtorno afetivo bipolar por meio do estudo de pares de irmãos / Personality traits and impulsivity in bipolar disorder: a sib-pair study

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2010

RESUMO

Recent studies have shown that euthymic patients with bipolar disorder present higher scores on impulsivity, novelty seeking, harm avoidance and selftranscendence and lower scores on self-directedness and cooperativeness than healthy controls. However it is unclear whether specific personality traits are vulnerability markers for bipolar disorder or represent a scarring effect of the affective episodes. The aim of this study was to compare temperament, character and impulsivity among patients with bipolar disorder, their unaffected siblings and healthy controls. We assessed 67 euthymic outpatients with bipolar disorder type I, 67 full siblings and 70 healthy controls using the Temperament and Character Inventory and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. Patients were euthymic if they present a Hamilton depression rating scale score and a Young mania rating scale score less than 8. Analysis of variance was used to compare mean scores of temperament, character and impulsivity among the three groups, and the Games- Howell test and the Tukey test were used as post-hoc tests for pairwise comparisons. The level of significance was set at 5%. Euthymic patients with bipolar disorder showed higher scores on impulsivity, novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and selftranscendence, and lower scores on self-directedness and cooperativeness than healthy controls. Their siblings without bipolar disorder diagnosis showed higher scores on harm avoidance and motor impulsivity and lower scores on selfdirectedness than healthy controls. A subset of 32 siblings who never have developed any psychiatric disorder during lifetime showed higher harm avoidance scores than healthy controls. Our results suggest that higher scores on harm avoidance and motor impulsivity, and lower scores no self-directedness may represent vulnerability markers for bipolar disorder. The harm avoidance dimension stands out since it remained higher even among siblings without any axis I psychiatric diagnosis. These data may contribute to further improve preventive strategies in subjects at high risk for bipolar disorder

ASSUNTO(S)

comportamento impulsivo personalidade personality character temperament caráter bipolar disorder impulsive behavior transtorno bipolar temperamento

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