Janiri D, Sani G, Danese E, Simonetti A, Ambrosi E, Angeletti G, Erbuto D, Caltagirone C, Girardi P, Spalletta G. J. Affect. Disord. 2014; 175C: 92-97.
Affiliation
IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Neuropsychiatry Laboratory, Department of Clinical and Behavioral Neurology, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: g.spalletta@hsantalucia.it.
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.