Are measures of hypomanic personality, impulsive nonconformity and rigidity predictors of bipolar symptoms?

OBJECTIVES: It has been suggested that temperaments such as 'hypomanic personality' (HYP) have an explanatory role in affective disorders. Similarly, the impulsive nonconformity scale, originally designed to assess psychosis proneness, was recently found to augment the prediction of manic episodes. Conversely, research indicates that 'rigidity', a central feature of Typus Melancholicus (TMEL; von Zerssen, 1996), may characterize the premorbid personality of depressives. DESIGN: The present study combines these three scales to prospectively predict manic and depressive symptoms diagnosed 2 years later in a non-college student population. METHOD: Structured clinical interviews for DSM-IV were conducted with 114 individuals (60% female, mean age = 19 . 9 years), 2 years after an initial screening. RESULTS: It was found that none of the predictors predicted purely depressive symptoms. As expected, HYP emerged as the strongest predictor of (hypo-)manic symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: While rigidity did not predict depression, people with a hypomanic temperament are at risk of developing symptoms of bipolar disorder, especially (hypo-)manic ones. It is noteworthy that this was evident in our young sample, still in the earlier stages of the high-risk period.