Association of premorbid intelligence with level of functioning and illness severity in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder is a severe psychiatric syndrome defined by periodic mood shifts. Patients with bipolar disorder show cognitive impairments relative to healthy controls. The risk of developing schizophrenia, and partially also bipolar disorder, has previously been shown to increase with lower premorbid intelligence. It is not known if premorbid intelligence is associated with level of functioning and illness severity of people having developed bipolar disorder.

We used multiple linear and ordinal regression to analyze how premorbid intelligence, as measured at conscription, associate with functional outcome and illness severity in Swedish male bipolar disorder patients (n = 788).

We found that lower premorbid intelligence is associated with lower percentage of time in work, after adjusting for age and bipolar subtype, and correcting for multiple comparisons. We also found a strong negative association with the total number of inpatient episodes and psychiatric comorbidity, but not with interepisodic remission, treatment with psychotherapy or lithium or the presence of any complicating socioeconomical factors. Adjusting for confounding genetic factors using polygenic risk scores for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia had no effect on the associations.

This study lacks females and controls and may thus have lower generalizability.

In conclusion, premorbid intelligence is associated with both level of functioning and illness severity as well as comorbidity in bipolar disorder patients. Further research is needed to develop targeted interventions for this subgroup of bipolar disorder patients.