Quality of life in youth with bipolar disorder and unaffected offspring of parents with bipolar disorder

Background: There have been few studies investigating quality of life (QoL) in pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) patients and none comparing it with that observed in unaffected offspring of parents with BD and healthy controls.

Methods: The self-report Youth Quality of Life Instrument-Research version (YQoL-R) was administered in 26 pediatric BD patients, 17 unaffected offspring of parents with BD, and 24 individuals with no history of DSM-IV Axis I psychiatric disorders. All diagnoses were determined through interviews based on the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version.

Results: There were statistical differences among the groups for all YQoL-R domains. Pairwise comparisons showed that perceived QoL was significantly worse in the BD group than in the unaffected offspring and healthy subjects, a difference that persisted even when only euthymic subjects were analyzed. There were no significant differences between the unaffected offspring and healthy subjects for any YQoL-R domain.

Limitations: Our sample was small. There was no QoL report from subjects parents nor data about family environment or BD parents' mood state.

Conclusions: There is a need for studies to investigate in greater detail the relationship between QoL and psychological resilience, particularly in the unaffected offspring of parents with BD.