Introduction:

Literature reports show that bipolar offspring (BO) present with a wide range of psychiatric disorders. Comparison between BO and control parent offspring (CPO) may help to identify which psychopathological findings are specific to this high-risk group.

Objective:

To compare the psychopathological characteristics between a group of BO type-I and a group of CPO, by identifying the presence of psychiatric disorders according the DSM-IV-TR.

Methods:

A descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional and comparative study was conducted with 127 offspring of parents with bipolar disorder type-I from the multimodal intervention programme (PRISMA) and with 150 CPO between 6 and 30 years of age. Subjects were evaluated with validated diagnostic interviews (K-SADS-PL and DIGS).

Results:

The BO group showed higher frequencies for bipolar disorder (prevalence ratio [PR] = 17.70; 95% confidence interval [CI]; 1.02-306.83), bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (PR = 23.07, 95% CI; 2.8-189.0, p = 0.0001), disorders due to psychoactive substance use (PR = 9.52,95% CI; 2.93-30.90), oppositional defiant disorder (PR = 4.10,95% CI; 1.70-9.89), posttraumatic stress disorder (PR = 3.90, 95% CI 1.30-11.66), disorder due to alcohol use (PR = 3.84, 95% CI; 1.28-11.48), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (PR = 2.26, 95% CI; 1.37-3.75), and major depressive disorder (PR = 2.25, 95% CI; 1.13-4.50). Statistically significant differences were also found in the CGAS and GAF functional scales, with lower scores for the BO group.

Conclusion:

These findings confirm previous literature reports showing that BO have higher rates of affective and non-affective psychiatric disorders than control subjects, and also a lower level of global functioning.

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