Long-term outcomes of youth who manifested the CBCL-Pediatric Bipolar Disorder phenotype during childhood and/or adolescence.

Objective: Recent studies have identified a Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) profile that characterizes children with severe aggression, inattention, and mood instability. This profile has been coined the CBCL-Pediatric Bipolar Disorder (PBD) phenotype, because it is commonly seen among children with bipolar disorder. However, mounting evidence suggests that the CBCL-PBD may be a better tool for identifying children with severe functional impairment and broad-ranging psychiatric comorbidities rather than bipolar disorder itself.

A prospective high-risk study of the association among maternal negativity, apparent frontal lobe dysfunction, and the development of bipolar disorder.

In a previous paper, the authors found that impairment on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in adolescence was predictive of bipolar disorder in young adulthood among offspring of mothers with bipolar illness. In the present study, the authors explore the contribution of maternal characteristics, beyond maternal mood disorder, to the prediction of offspring dysfunction on the WCST. Results showed that maternal bipolar disorder and maternal negativity were both predictive of impaired performance on the WCST during adolescence.

Maternal and environmental factors influence the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis response to corticotropin-releasing hormone infusion in offspring of mothers with or without mood disorders.

Individuals with melancholic major depression exhibit basal hypercortisolism and an attenuated ACTH response to exogenous corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) infusion. Given the greater incidence of depression in children of depressed parents, we examined the ACTH and cortisol responses to ovine CRH (oCRH) infusion in 63 adolescent offspring of mothers with major depression, bipolar illness, or no psychiatric illness. Psychiatric and observational assessments of these families had been conducted over the course of 10 years preceding this study.

A prospective study of the association among impaired executive functioning, childhood attentional problems, and the development of bipolar disorder.

Studies of adults who have been diagnosed with, and treated for, bipolar disorder have shown that these patients exhibit impairment on measures of executive functioning. However, it is unclear whether executive dysfunction precedes the diagnosis of bipolar illness, or develops subsequent to its onset. Moreover, investigators have failed to control for the effects of premorbid attentional problems on cognitive performance in these patients.