Childhood cumulative trauma, social support and stress as predictors of illness outcomes and quality of life in bipolar disorder

Amy-Leigh Rowe, Tania Perich, Tanya Meade

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Objective: Trauma, social support and stress have been identified as factors which may be associated with the bipolar disorder illness course. However, these are yet to be examined in prospective studies as predictors of illness outcomes and overall quality of life in bipolar disorder. Method: One hundred and fourteen participants (N=97; 85.1% female) living with bipolar disorder I (41.2%) or II (58.8%) completed a semi-structured interview and a range of self-report measures assessing trauma history, social support, perceived stress, depression, anxiety, mania, suicidality, number of mood episodes and quality of life, at baseline and 6-month follow-up. Results: Childhood cumulative trauma, social support and perceived stress accounted for a substantial and significant portion of the variance in quality of life (62%; 23.6%), anxiety severity (34.6%; 24.5%) and depression severity (49.6%; 26.7%), at both baseline and 6-month follow-up. Perceived stress made significant unique contributions to the prediction of all outcomes, and social support made significant unique contributions to depression and quality of life in bipolar disorder. Conclusion: Stress and social support play an important role in bipolar disorder and in quality of life for people living with this condition. Given that stress and social support are modifiable risk factors, this provides a promising direction for future intervention-based research.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)334-344
Number of pages11
JournalAustralian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2024

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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