Affective Temperaments and Seasonality in Patients with Mood Disorders

Major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) are complex and disabling mental disorders, requiring a clinical characterization to improve patients' outcome. Affective temperaments and seasonality are associated with illness severity and prognosis in mood disorders, but are rarely explored in clinical practice.

The impact of affective temperaments on seasonality has been explored in real-world patients suffering from MDD, BD-I or BD-II through the brief version of the Munster Temperament Evaluation of the Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego (b-TEMPS-M) and the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ). Patients' levels of anxiety, depressive, and manic symptoms as well as trait-impulsivity, quality of life and global functioning were also explored through standardized assessment instruments. Associations were tested by univariate and multivariate analyses.

The 100 recruited participants were mostly female (68%) with a mean age of 45.1±14.0 years. Sixty-six percent of them had a diagnosis of MDD and 34% of BD. Forty-seven patients had a seasonal pattern of the disorder, as shown by a Global Seasonality Score (GSS) at SPAQ >10. GSS mean value significantly correlated with b-TEMPS-M depressive (p<0.01), anxious (p<0.01) and cyclothymic (p<0.01) scores; linear regression showed an association between GSS and b-TEMPS-M depressive (p<0.01) and anxious (p<0.05) subscales, and with trait-impulsivity (p<0.05).

Depressive and anxious temperaments increase the risk of a seasonal pattern of mood disorders. Assessing affective temperaments and seasonality may be useful in the clinical characterization of the individual patient in order to better personalize the management of MDD and BD.