Relationships of affective temperament ratings to diagnosis and morbidity measures in major affective disorders

Background Ratings of affective temperament types show promise in helping to differentiate diagnostic groups among major affective disorders as well as to predict associations with important aspects of morbidity including suicidal risk. Methods The Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego auto-rating (TEMPS-A) questionnaire was completed by 858 unselected, consecutive, consenting adults diagnosed with a DSM-5 major affective disorder (173 bipolar-1 [BD-1]), 250 BD-2, 435 major depressive disorder [MDD]) to score for anxious (anx), cyclothymic (cyc), dysthymic (dys), hyperthymic (hyp), and irritable (irr) affective temperaments. We tested their associations with diagnosis and selected clinical factors, including diagnosis, depression scores, suicidal ideation or acts, substance abuse, episodes/year, and %-time ill. Results Scores for cyc ranked: BD-2 > BD-1 > MDD; anx ranked: MDD > BD-2 > BD-1; irr was greater in BD than MDD; dys was greater in MDD than BD; hyp did not differ by diagnosis. We confirmed associations of suicidal risk with higher scores of all temperament types except lower hyp scores. Higher cyc and irr scores and lower anx scores were associated with substance abuse. Several scores were higher with measures of greater affective morbidity: cyc with current depression, episodes/year, and %-time ill; irr with more episodes and depressions/year and greater %-time manic. Some of these associations were selective for BD or MDD. Conclusions The findings indicate that TEMPS-A ratings of affective temperament types can contribute to differential diagnoses and predict types and amounts of affective morbidity, as well as detecting suicidal risks.

Automated summary

Ratings of affective temperament types using the TEMPS-A questionnaire can help differentiate diagnostic groups and predict types and amounts of affective morbidity, while also detecting suicidal risks.