Temperamental Predisposition to Bipolar Disorders: Untangling the Measurement Knot 

The most widely accepted taxonomy of Bipolar Disorder (BD) is that which is described in DSM-IV (APA, 1994) as three categories of bipolar illness – Bipolar I, Bipolar II, and Cyclothymic disorder.  However, much recent research rejects this categorical notion of BD, and instead advocates a model of bipolar vulnerability that is underpinned by continuously distributed dimensions of personality and temperament (e.g. Clark, 2005).

Five validated instruments have been used to measure the dimensional properties of bipolar vulnerability.  The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (Hirschfeld et al, 2000) advocates a model of single-dimension vulnerability to BD, the General Behavior Inventory (Depue et al, 1989) associates BD vulnerability with two dimensions, the TEMPS-A (Akiskal et al, 2005) instrument uses a 5-dimension model of vulnerability to mood disorders in general, while the NEO personality inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) is a putative 5-dimension model of adult personality.  ‘Ups & downs’ (Angst et al, 2003) is a fifth measure that has been associated with BD vulnerability.  To date, few studies have directly compared these instruments as measures of bipolar vulnerability, and no published studies have compared all five.

The aim of the current study was to investigate the dimensional construct(s) underpinning bipolar vulnerability and, more precisely, which of the five above-named instruments best captures the fundamental nature of dimensional vulnerability to BD.

On the basis of recent research, it was expected that a two-dimensional model would best represent the latent structure of vulnerability to BD.  The two factors expected to arise in principal components analysis of the five measures were (1) depressive/dysthymic tendencies and (2) manic/hypomanic tendencies.

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