Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T04:23:27.581Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Life Events and Relapse in Established Bipolar Affective Disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Heather Mcpherson ,
Peter Herbison  and
Sarah Romans
Heather Mcpherson
Affiliation:
Otago Medical School
Peter Herbison
Affiliation:
Otago Medical School
Sarah Romans*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, Otago Medical School, PO Box 913, Dunedin, New Zealand
*
∗Correspondence
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A New Zealand cohort of 58 patients with bipolar affective disorder was studied prospectively with three-monthly interviews in order to determine the relationship between life events and their relapses. Careful attention was paid to dating life events and the earliest signs of relapse and to assessing the independence of life events from the illness. No statistically significant association was found between life events and the likelihood of relapses, either mania or depression, for the 71% of patients who experienced at least one relapse during the two-year study. This finding is at variance with a companion study, with identical methodology, which found a small increase of life events before relapse. These data add further weight to the previous reports that life events are significant precipitants of bipolar illness only for earlier episodes in the course of this chronic disorder.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 163 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 381 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1993 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambelas, A. (1979) Psychologically stressful events in the precipitation of manic episodes. British Journal of Psychiatry, 135, 15–21.Google Scholar
Ambelas, A. (1987) Life events and mania. A special relationship? British Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 235–240.Google Scholar
Ambelas, A. & George, M. (1988) Individualized stress vulnerabilities in manic depressive patients with repeated episodes. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 81, 448–449.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edn, revised) (DSM-III-R). Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Bidzinska, E. J. (1984) Stress factors in affective diseases. British Journal of Psychiatry, 144, 161–166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, G. W., Skalir, F., Harris, T. O., et al (1973) Life events and psychiatric disorders. Part I: some methodological issues. Psychological Medicine, 3, 74–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, G. W., Skalir, F., Harris, T. O., & Harris, T. (1978) Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Brown, G. W., Skalir, F., & Harris, T., Bifulco, A. & Harris, T. O. (1987) Life events, vulnerability and onset of depression: some refinements. British Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 30–42.Google Scholar
Brugha, T. S. & Conroy, R. (1985) Categories of depression: reported life events in a controlled design. British Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 641–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, R. K., Langeluddecke, P. & Tennant, C. (1986) Threatening life events in the onset of schizophrenia, schizophreniform psychosis and hypomania. British Journal of Psychiatry, 148, 680–685.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cornell, D. G., Milden, R. S. & Shimp, S. (1985) Stressful life events associated with endogenous depression. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, 173, 470–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunner, D. L., Patrick, V. & Fieve, R. R. (1979) Life events at the onset of bipolar affective illness. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136, 508–511.Google Scholar
Ellicott, A., Hammen, C., Gitlin, M., et al (1990) Life events and the course of bipolar disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 1194–1198.Google Scholar
Endicott, J. & Spitzer, R. L. (1978) A diagnostic interview: the schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia, lifetime version (SADS-L). Archives of General Psychiatry, 35, 837–844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glassner, B., Haldipur, C. V. & Dessauersmith, J. (1979) Role loss and working class manic depression. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 167, 530–541.Google Scholar
Glassner, B., Haldipur, C. V. & Dessauersmith, J. (1983) Life events and early and late onset of bipolar disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 140, 215–217.Google ScholarPubMed
Goodwin, F. K. & Jamison, K. R. (1990) Manic-Depressive Illness. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, K. S., Dunner, D. L. & Fieve, R. R. (1977) Bipolar illness: a prospective study of life events. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 18, 497–502.Google Scholar
Hamilton, M. (1960) A rating scale for depression. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 23, 56–62.Google Scholar
Haynes, R. B., Taylor, D. W. & Sackett, D. L. (1979) Compliance in Health Care. London: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, N., Bruce-Jones, W. & Silverstone, T. (1992) Life events and relapse in bipolar affective disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 25, 13–20.Google Scholar
Kennedy, S., Thompson, R., Stancer, H. C., et al (1983) Life events precipitating mania. British Journal of Psychiatry, 142, 398–403.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P. B. & Strauss, J. S. (1984) The recurrence of mania: environmental factors and medical treatment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 141, 77–80.Google ScholarPubMed
Lloyd, C. (1981) Life events and depressive disorder reviewed. Archives of General Psychiatry, 37, 529–548.Google Scholar
Miller, P. McC., Dean, C., Ingham, J. G., et al (1986) The epidemiology of life events and long-term difficulties, with some reflections on the concept of independence. British Journal of Psychiatry, 148, 686–696.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E. S. (1978) Contribution of life events to causation of psychiatric illness. Psychological Medicine, 8, 245–253.Google Scholar
Paykel, E. S. (1983) Methodological aspects of life events research. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 27, 341–352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E. S., Dienelt, M. N. & Lindenthal, J. J. (1969) Life events and depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 21, 753–760.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E. S., Dienelt, M. N. & Lindenthal, J. J., Prusoff, E. A. & Uhlenbuth, E. H. (1971) Scaling of life events. Archives of General Psychiatry, 25, 340–347.Google Scholar
Post, R. M., Robinson, D. R. & Ballenger, J. C. (1984) Conditioning, sensitisation and kindling: implications for the course of affective illness. In Neurobiology of Mood Disorders (eds Post, R. M. & Ballenger, J. C.), pp. 432–466. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.Google Scholar
Romans, S. E. & McPherson, H. M. (1992) The social networks of bipolar affective disorder patients. Journal of Affective Disorders, 25, 221–228.Google Scholar
Sclare, P. & Creed, F. (1990) Life events and the onset of mania. British Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 508–514.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R., Endicott, J. & Robins, E. (1978) Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC). Archives of Generai Psychiatry, 35, 773–782.Google Scholar
Stern, E. S. (1944) The psychopathology of manic-depressive disorder and involutional melancholia. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 20, 20–32.Google Scholar
Tennant, C. (1983) Life events and psychological morbidity: the evidence from prospective studies. Psychological Medicine, 13, 483–486.Google Scholar
Young, R. C., Biggs, J. T., Ziegler, V. E., et al (1978) A rating scale for mania: reliability, validity and sensitivity. British Journal of Psychiatry, 133, 429–435.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.