Background
Trauma histories may increase risk of perinatal psychiatric episodes. We designed an epidemiological population‐based cohort study to explore if adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in ...girls increases risk of later postpartum psychiatric episodes.
Methods
Using Danish registers, we identified women born in Denmark between January 1980 and December 1998 (129,439 childbirths). Exposure variables were ACE between ages 0 and 15 including: (1) family disruption, (2) parental somatic illness, (3) parental labor market exclusion, (4) parental criminality, (5) parental death, (6) placement in out‐of‐home care, (7) parental psychopathology excluding substance use, and (8) parental substance use disorder. Primary outcome was first occurrence of in‐ or outpatient contact 0–6 months postpartum at a psychiatric treatment facility with any psychiatric diagnoses, ICD‐10, F00‐F99 (N = 651). We conducted survival analyses using Cox proportional hazard regressions of postpartum psychiatric episodes.
Results
Approximately 52% of the sample experienced ACE, significantly increasing risk of any postpartum psychiatric diagnosis. Highest risks were observed among women who experienced out‐of‐home placement, hazard ratio (HR) 2.57 (95% CI: 1.90–3.48). Women experiencing two adverse life events had higher risks of postpartum psychiatric diagnosis HR: 1.88 (95% CI: 1.51–2.36), compared to those with one ACE, HR: 1.24 (95% CI: 1.03–49) and no ACE, HR: 1.00 (reference group).
Conclusions
ACE primarily due to parental psychopathology and disability contributes to increased risk of postpartum psychiatric episodes; and greater numbers of ACE increases risk for postpartum psychiatric illness with an observed dose–response effect. Future work should explore genetic and environmental factors that increase risk and/or confer resilience.
Sleep disturbances are important symptoms to monitor in people with bipolar disorder (BD) but the precise longitudinal relationships between sleep and mood remain unclear. We aimed to examine ...associations between stable and dynamic aspects of sleep and mood in people with BD, and assess individual differences in the strength of these associations.
Participants (
= 649) with BD-I (
= 400) and BD-II (
= 249) provided weekly self-reports of insomnia, depression and (hypo)mania symptoms using the
online monitoring tool for 21 months. Dynamic structural equation models were used to examine the interplay between weekly reports of insomnia and mood. The effects of clinical and demographic characteristics on associations were also assessed.
Increased variability in insomnia symptoms was associated with increased mood variability. In the sample as a whole, we found strong evidence of bidirectional relationships between insomnia and depressive symptoms but only weak support for bidirectional relationships between insomnia and (hypo)manic symptoms. We found substantial variability between participants in the strength of prospective associations between insomnia and mood, which depended on age, gender, bipolar subtype, and a history of rapid cycling.
Our results highlight the importance of monitoring sleep in people with BD. However, researchers and clinicians investigating the association between sleep and mood should consider subgroup differences in this relationship. Advances in digital technology mean that intensive longitudinal data on sleep and mood are becoming increasingly available. Novel methods to analyse these data present an exciting opportunity for furthering our understanding of BD.
Abstract Aims To assess the comorbidity rates of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) in bipolar disorder (BD) and to explore possible sources of heterogeneity. Methods Studies were identified through ...database searches. Meta-analytic techniques were employed to aggregate data on lifetime comorbidity and to explore possible sources of heterogeneity. Funnel plots were used to detect publication bias. Results In clinical studies, AUDs affected more than one in three subjects with BD. Significant heterogeneity was found, which was largely explained by the geographical location of study populations and gender ratio of participants. AUDs affected more than one in five women and two in five men. Conclusion AUDs are highly prevalent in BD. Our study revealed a substantial heterogeneity across studies. Further research including control groups is needed. Patients with BD should be assessed for current and previous AUDs.
Bipolar disorder has been associated with several personality traits, cognitive styles and affective temperaments. Women who have bipolar disorder are at increased risk of experiencing postpartum ...psychosis, however little research has investigated these traits and temperaments in relation to postpartum psychosis. The aim of this study is to establish whether aspects of personality, cognitive style and affective temperament that have been associated with bipolar disorder also confer vulnerability to postpartum psychosis over and above their known association with bipolar disorder.
Personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, schizotypy and impulsivity), cognitive styles (low self-esteem and dysfunctional attitudes) and affective temperaments (including cyclothymic and depressive temperaments) were compared between two groups of parous women with DSM-IV bipolar I disorder: i) 284 with a lifetime history of postpartum psychosis within 6 weeks of delivery (PP group), ii) 268 without any history of mood episodes with onset during pregnancy or within 6 months of delivery (no perinatal mood episode, No PME group).
After controlling for current mood state, and key demographic, clinical and pregnancy-related variables, there were no statistically significant differences between the PP and No PME groups on any of the personality, cognitive style or affective temperament measures.
Personality traits, cognitive styles and affective temperaments previously shown to be associated with bipolar disorder in general were not specifically associated with the occurrence of postpartum psychosis. These factors may not be relevant for predicting risk of postpartum psychosis in women with bipolar disorder.
Women with bipolar disorder (BD) are at high risk of postpartum psychosis (PP). The factors that increase risk of PP among women with BD are not fully understood. Here, we examine whether sleep ...disruption in the perinatal period (poor sleep quality in late pregnancy and sleep deprivation related to childbirth) is associated with PP in a longitudinal study of pregnant women with BD.
Participants were 76 pregnant women with lifetime DSM-5 bipolar I disorder or schizoaffective-BD, followed from week 12 of pregnancy to 12 weeks postpartum. Demographics and lifetime psychopathology were assessed at baseline via semi-structured interview (Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry). Psychopathology and sleep disruption within the current perinatal period were assessed in the third trimester and at 12 weeks postpartum. Data were supplemented by clinician questionnaires and case-note review.
After controlling for prophylactic use of mood stabilising medication, the loss of at least one complete night of sleep across labour/delivery was associated with five times the odds of experiencing PP compared to no or less than one night of sleep loss across labour/delivery (OR 5.19, 95 % CI 1.45-18.54; p = 0.011). Sleep quality in late pregnancy was not associated with PP, and perinatal sleep disruption was not associated with postpartum depression.
Lack of objective measures of sleep factors.
In the context of other aetiological factors, severe sleep loss associated with childbirth/the immediate postpartum may act as a final trigger of PP. These findings could have important clinical implications for risk prediction and prevention of PP.
Perinatal psychiatric episodes comprise various disorders and symptom severity, which are diagnosed and treated in multiple treatment settings. To date, no studies have quantified the incidence and ...prevalence of perinatal psychiatric episodes treated in primary and secondary care, which we aimed to do in the present study. We designed a descriptive prospective study and included information from Danish population registers to study first-time ever and recurrent psychiatric episodes during the perinatal period, including treatment at psychiatric facilities and general practitioners (GPs). This was done for all women who had records of one or more singleton births from 1998 until 2012. In total, we had information on 822 439 children born to 491 242 unique mothers. Results showed first-time psychiatric episodes treated at inpatient facilities were rare during pregnancy, but increased significantly shortly following childbirth (0.02 vs 0.25 per 1000 births). In comparison, first-time psychiatric episodes treated at outpatient facilities were more common, and showed little variation across pregnancy and postpartum. For every single birth resulting in postpartum episodes treated at inpatient psychiatric facilities, 2.5 births were followed by an episode treated at outpatient psychiatric facility and 12 births by GP-provided pharmacological treatment. We interpret our results the following way: treated severe and moderate psychiatric disorders have different risk patterns in relation to pregnancy and childbirth, which suggests differences in the underlying etiology. We further speculate varying treatment incidence and prevalence in pregnancy vs postpartum may indicate that the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 peripartum specifier not adequately describes at-risk periods across moderate and severe perinatal psychiatric episodes.
Perinatal patients with bipolar and psychotic mood disorder exacerbations are challenging to treat and often receive suboptimal care. We sought to examine the treatment patterns and outcomes on one ...of the only US-based Perinatal Psychiatry Inpatient Units (PPIU). Perinatal patients admitted to the PPIU completed self-report measures at admission and before discharge. Retrospective chart reviews extracted history, diagnoses (current and past), and medication treatment. Patients who had discharge diagnoses of bipolar disorder, major depression with psychotic features, or postpartum psychosis were included. Forty-seven met the diagnostic inclusion criteria. Over an average length of stay (ALOS) of 9.96 days, there was significant improvement in depressive and anxiety symptoms and daily functioning (Work and Social Adjustment Scale). Psychiatric comorbidity was common. Polypharmacy was utilized in 87 %. The most common medications prescribed at discharge were antipsychotics, alone or in combination with mood stabilizers or antidepressants. ECT was performed in 10 % of cases. The complexity of patients with severe mood disorders or psychosis admitted to the PPIU supports individualized treatment plans that address both primary diagnosis and psychiatric comorbidities. Our results provide important information that can be disseminated to others to improve clinical outcomes for severe perinatal mood disorders.
Lithium is the mainstay prophylactic treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), but treatment response varies considerably across individuals. Patients who respond well to lithium treatment might represent ...a relatively homogeneous subtype of this genetically and phenotypically diverse disorder. Here, we performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to identify (i) specific genetic variations influencing lithium response and (ii) genetic variants associated with risk for lithium-responsive BD. Patients with BD and controls were recruited from Sweden and the United Kingdom. GWAS were performed on 2698 patients with subjectively defined (self-reported) lithium response and 1176 patients with objectively defined (clinically documented) lithium response. We next conducted GWAS comparing lithium responders with healthy controls (1639 subjective responders and 8899 controls; 323 objective responders and 6684 controls). Meta-analyses of Swedish and UK results revealed no significant associations with lithium response within the bipolar subjects. However, when comparing lithium-responsive patients with controls, two imputed markers attained genome-wide significant associations, among which one was validated in confirmatory genotyping (rs116323614, P=2.74 × 10(-8)). It is an intronic single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) on chromosome 2q31.2 in the gene SEC14 and spectrin domains 1 (SESTD1), which encodes a protein involved in regulation of phospholipids. Phospholipids have been strongly implicated as lithium treatment targets. Furthermore, we estimated the proportion of variance for lithium-responsive BD explained by common variants ('SNP heritability') as 0.25 and 0.29 using two definitions of lithium response. Our results revealed a genetic variant in SESTD1 associated with risk for lithium-responsive BD, suggesting that the understanding of BD etiology could be furthered by focusing on this subtype of BD.
We performed a genome-wide association study of 6447 bipolar disorder (BD) cases and 12 639 controls from the International Cohort Collection for Bipolar Disorder (ICCBD). Meta-analysis was performed ...with prior results from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Bipolar Disorder Working Group for a combined sample of 13 902 cases and 19 279 controls. We identified eight genome-wide significant, associated regions, including a novel associated region on chromosome 10 (rs10884920; P=3.28 × 10
) that includes the brain-enriched cytoskeleton protein adducin 3 (ADD3), a non-coding RNA, and a neuropeptide-specific aminopeptidase P (XPNPEP1). Our large sample size allowed us to test the heritability and genetic correlation of BD subtypes and investigate their genetic overlap with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. We found a significant difference in heritability of the two most common forms of BD (BD I SNP-h
=0.35; BD II SNP-h
=0.25; P=0.02). The genetic correlation between BD I and BD II was 0.78, whereas the genetic correlation was 0.97 when BD cohorts containing both types were compared. In addition, we demonstrated a significantly greater load of polygenic risk alleles for schizophrenia and BD in patients with BD I compared with patients with BD II, and a greater load of schizophrenia risk alleles in patients with the bipolar type of schizoaffective disorder compared with patients with either BD I or BD II. These results point to a partial difference in the genetic architecture of BD subtypes as currently defined.
Universal screening for postpartum depression is recommended in many countries. Knowledge of whether the disclosure of depressive symptoms in the postpartum period differs across cultures could ...improve detection and provide new insights into the pathogenesis. Moreover, it is a necessary step to evaluate the universal use of screening instruments in research and clinical practice. In the current study we sought to assess whether the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the most widely used screening tool for postpartum depression, measures the same underlying construct across cultural groups in a large international dataset.
Ordinal regression and measurement invariance were used to explore the association between culture, operationalized as education, ethnicity/race and continent, and endorsement of depressive symptoms using the EPDS on 8209 new mothers from Europe and the USA.
Education, but not ethnicity/race, influenced the reporting of postpartum depression difference between robust comparative fit indexes (∆*CFI) 0.01), but not between European countries (∆*CFI < 0.01).
Investigators and clinicians should be aware of the potential differences in expression of phenotype of postpartum depression that women of different educational backgrounds may manifest. The increasing cultural heterogeneity of societies together with the tendency towards globalization requires a culturally sensitive approach to patients, research and policies, that takes into account, beyond rhetoric, the context of a person's experiences and the context in which the research is conducted.
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