Comparison of temperament and clinical features of bipolar disorder patients with and without suicide attempt history

Objective: Suicide attempt is quite frequently encountered in the course of bipolar disorder (BD). In recent years many studies were conducted for examining the relationship between temperamental characteristics and clinical characteristics of patients with BD. The aim of this study is to compare the specific temperament features and clinical features of BD patients with and without a history of suicide attempt (SA) to test the hypothesis that depressive, cyclothymic and irritable temperament scores are higher in bipolar patients with suicide history. Methods: We enrolled a total of 100 patients, 50 of them with a history of SA, 50 without at Bakirkoy Training and Research Hospital for Psychiatry, Neurology and Neurosurgery. All patients were diagnosed according to DSM-IV-TR criteria for 'bipolar disorder in remission' and signed a written informed consent before study entry. Sociodemographic data were collected and temperament was assessed by the means of TEMPS-A. Results: Depressive, cyclothymic and irritable temperament scores were significantly higher in BD patients with SA than in those without. Moreover cigarette and alcohol consumption, family history for psychiatric illness, presence of other psychiatric disorders, history of childhood trauma, episode duration, history of hypo/manic switch were also significantly higher in the group with than without SA. Discussion: Our study confirmed other findings reported in the literature on risk factors associated with suicide behavior. In addition, we also found that depressive, cyclothymic and irritable temperament scores are higher in patients with SA. The assessment of temperament could be added in the evaluation of patients in order to predict possible suicide behavior.