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Unstable alcohol consumption linked to hypomania vulnerability
By Lucy Piper, MedWire News
25 February 2010
Compr Psychiatry 2010; 51: 171?176
Unstable alcohol consumption and binge drinking may be a marker of increased risk for hypomania, say researchers.
They note that a generally increased consumption of alcohol was not associated with an increased risk for hypomania, however.
?Therefore, individuals at risk for hypomania might not necessarily drink more over a given period of time but show greater fluctuations in their drinking,? explain Thomas Myer and Larissa Wolkenstein, from the University of T?bingen in Germany.
?This supports the idea that instability in different areas of behavior is characteristic of vulnerability to hypomania,? they write in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry.
In an interview with 120 male students who had completed the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS), the researchers administered the FORM 90 to assess daily drinking in the 90 days prior to the interview. The participants also completed the Composite Diagnostic Interview to derive psychiatric diagnoses.
Regression analyses of the data showed that, as expected, men with alcohol-related disorders drank significantly more alcohol than other men, and more frequently.
When they looked at individual fluctuations in the amount of alcohol consumed, the researchers found that only men at risk for hypomania showed intra-individual fluctuations in alcohol consumption beyond the clinical diagnosis of abuse or dependency.
Vulnerability for hypomania was also significantly associated with the amount of alcohol drank on each drinking day, whereas it was not associated with the number of abstinent days.
This means ?that people scoring high on the HPS did not drink more often than did those low in risk, but when they started drinking alcohol, they drank more,? say Myer and Wolkenstein.
They conclude: ?Our results suggest that risk for hypomania is associated with a specific pattern of alcohol consumption characterized by a more variable drinking pattern and binge drinking. This association was not explained by the presence of an alcohol-related or affective disorder, so that it is unlikely just to be a symptom of them.?
The researchers say that this specific drinking pattern highlights instability as a core factor in vulnerability for bipolar disorder.
They recommend further research into the motivational and affective processes associated with drinking alcohol and bipolar disorder to determine how mood and drinking are related.
Free abstract
By Lucy Piper, MedWire News
25 February 2010
Compr Psychiatry 2010; 51: 171?176
Unstable alcohol consumption and binge drinking may be a marker of increased risk for hypomania, say researchers.
They note that a generally increased consumption of alcohol was not associated with an increased risk for hypomania, however.
?Therefore, individuals at risk for hypomania might not necessarily drink more over a given period of time but show greater fluctuations in their drinking,? explain Thomas Myer and Larissa Wolkenstein, from the University of T?bingen in Germany.
?This supports the idea that instability in different areas of behavior is characteristic of vulnerability to hypomania,? they write in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry.
In an interview with 120 male students who had completed the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS), the researchers administered the FORM 90 to assess daily drinking in the 90 days prior to the interview. The participants also completed the Composite Diagnostic Interview to derive psychiatric diagnoses.
Regression analyses of the data showed that, as expected, men with alcohol-related disorders drank significantly more alcohol than other men, and more frequently.
When they looked at individual fluctuations in the amount of alcohol consumed, the researchers found that only men at risk for hypomania showed intra-individual fluctuations in alcohol consumption beyond the clinical diagnosis of abuse or dependency.
Vulnerability for hypomania was also significantly associated with the amount of alcohol drank on each drinking day, whereas it was not associated with the number of abstinent days.
This means ?that people scoring high on the HPS did not drink more often than did those low in risk, but when they started drinking alcohol, they drank more,? say Myer and Wolkenstein.
They conclude: ?Our results suggest that risk for hypomania is associated with a specific pattern of alcohol consumption characterized by a more variable drinking pattern and binge drinking. This association was not explained by the presence of an alcohol-related or affective disorder, so that it is unlikely just to be a symptom of them.?
The researchers say that this specific drinking pattern highlights instability as a core factor in vulnerability for bipolar disorder.
They recommend further research into the motivational and affective processes associated with drinking alcohol and bipolar disorder to determine how mood and drinking are related.
Free abstract
