Is risk for mania associated with increased daydreaming as a form of mental imagery?

Background: Bipolar disorder and risk for mania are associated with setting high goals and dysregulated goal pursuit. One mechanism mediating between setting high goals and manic symptoms could be daydreaming or more generally, mental imagery. 'Daydreams' (as one form of mental imagery) are characterized by the fact that the content is produced deliberately. Akiskal et al. (1995) reported that daydreaming prospectively predicted a switch from unipolar depression to bipolar disorder. We here hypothesized that risk for mania should also be associated with increased daydreaming after controlling for depression.

Method: N=249 participants from a non-clinical, community sample completed several self-report measures including the Hypomanic Personality scale and Daydreaming scale.

Results: Hierarchical regression revealed that risk for mania predicted daydreaming after controlling for current and former depression.

Limitations: Only self-report measures were used. The sample was a non-clinical, primarily White British sample, which has implications for generalizability.

Conclusions: Despite limitations our results support the hypothesis that vulnerability for mania is associated with daydreaming. Daydreaming was related to mania and depression which highlights that it might be relevant for the etiology or maintenance of mood disorders.