TY - JOUR PY - 2014// TI - Childhood traumatic experiences of patients with bipolar disorder type I and type II JO - Journal of affective disorders A1 - Janiri, Delfina A1 - Sani, Gabriele A1 - Danese, Emanuela A1 - Simonetti, Alessio A1 - Ambrosi, Elisa A1 - Angeletti, Gloria A1 - Erbuto, Denise A1 - Caltagirone, Carlo A1 - Girardi, Paolo A1 - Spalletta, Gianfranco SP - 92 EP - 97 VL - 175C IS - N2 - BACKGROUND: Childhood trauma is an important environmental stressor associated with bipolar disorders (BD). It is still not clear if it is differently distributed between BD I and BD II. Therefore, the aim of this research was to investigate the distribution patterns of childhood trauma in BD I and BD II. In this perspective, we also studied the relationship between childhood trauma and suicidality.

METHODS: We assessed 104 outpatients diagnosed with BD I (n=58) or BD II (n=46) according to DSM-IV-TR criteria and 103 healthy controls (HC) matched for age, sex and education level. History of childhood trauma was obtained using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ).

RESULTS: All patients with BD had had more severe traumatic childhood experiences than HC. Both BD I and BD II patients differed significantly from HC for trauma summary score and emotional abuse. BD I patients differed significantly from HC for sexual abuse, and BD II differed from HC for emotional neglect. BD I and BD II did not significantly differ for any type of trauma. Suicide attempts were linked to both emotional and sexual abuse in BD I and only to emotional abuse in BD II. Emotional abuse was an independent predictor of lifetime suicide attempts in BD patients. LIMITATIONS: The reliability of the retrospective assessment of childhood trauma experiences with the CTQ during adulthood may be influenced by uncontrolled recall bias.

CONCLUSIONS: The assessment of childhood trauma, which has great clinical importance because of its strong link with suicidality, can unveil slight differences between BD subtypes and HC.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0165-0327 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2014.12.055 ID - ref1 ER -