To Determine the Personality Traits, Clinical Characteristics and Cognitive Functions in Bipolar Disorder Patients with Comorbid Alcohol use Disorders

BACKGROUND: Comorbidity of bipolar disorder and substance use disorder are common. In bipolar disorder with comorbid Alcohol use disorder the disease course is more severe and difficult to treat. Bipolar patients with history of alcohol use have greater difficulties in cognitive functions than those without alcohol use. Whether alcohol negatively affects specific cognitive functions or whether deficits are more diffuse in nature is unclear. Alcoholic bipolar patients present with personality traits like high novelty seeking and neuroticism. Personality, at least to an extent, mediates the co-occurrence of substance use in bipolar disorder. Thus identifying these personality traits in bipolar or substance use disorder patients will help us to prevent the co-occurrence of the 2nd disorder. AIM OF THE STUDY: The aim of the study is to evaluate the clinical characteristics, personality traits and cognitive functions of patients with Bipolar and comorbid alcohol use disorders. METHODOLOGY: A case–controlled study was designed with 50 male patients with Bipolar and alcohol use disorder enrolled in the case group and 50 male patients with bipolar disorder selected as the control group. A semi structured questionnaire was used to measure demographic characteristics. alcohol status was measured using AUDIT and SADQ scales. Personality traits were measured using MEO –FFI questionnaire. cognitive tests – Frontal lobe assessment battery, Stroop test DSST and verbal N back test were given to cases and controls.. Descriptive statistics, Chi square test, ANOVA and correlation statistics were used to analyse socio-demographic data, Personality traits, clinical features and cognitive functions between both the groups. RESULTS: The cases group had significantly more no. of hospitalizations and mixed episodes than control group. The cases group scored significantly higher on the personality traits of neuroticism and novelty seeking. The cases group had significantly poorer performance on cognitive tests of FAB, Stroop test and digit symbol substitution test. duration of alcohol use was associated positively with total no. of episodes, no. of manic episodes, no. of mixed episodes and no. of hospitalizations. These results show that cognitive deficits were more prominent with the severity of dependence. CONCLUSION: The study confirmed the high prevalence of neuroticism and openness to experience traits in bipolar with alcohol use disorders. The study also showed that No. of ospitalizations and No. of mixed episodes were more. The study also showed that there are increased deficits in executive functions, response inhibition and processing speed in bipolar patients with comorbid alcohol use disorders