Exploration of mood spectrum symptoms during a major depressive episode: The impact of contrapolarity—Results from a transdiagnostic cluster analysis on an Italian sample of unipolar and bipolar patients

Background: Subthreshold hypomania during a major depressive episode challenges the bipolar-unipolar dichotomy. In our study we employed a cross-diagnostic cluster analysis – to identify distinct subgroups within a cohort of depressed patients.

Methods: A k-means cluster analysis- based on the domain scores of the Mood Spectrum Self-Report (MOODS-SR) questionnaire-was performed on a data set of 300 adults with either bipolar or unipolar depression. After identifying groups, between-clusters comparisons were conducted on MOODS-SR domains and factors and on a set of sociodemographic, clinical and psychometric variables.

Results: Three clusters were identified: one with intermediate depressive and poor manic symptomatology (Mild), one with severe depressive and poor manic symptomatology (Moderate), and a third one with severe depressive and intermediate manic symptomatology (Mixed). Across the clusters, bipolar patients were significantly less represented in the Mild one, while the DSM-5 “Mixed features” specifier did not differentiate the groups. When compared to the other patients, those of Mixed cluster exhibited a stronger association with most of the illness-severity, quality of life, and outcomes measures considered. After performing pairwise comparisons significant differences between “Mixed” and “Moderate” clusters were restricted to: current and disease-onset age, psychotic ideation, suicidal attempts, hospitalization numbers, impulsivity levels and comorbidity for Cluster B personality disorder.

Conclusions: In the present study, a clustering approach based on a spectrum exploration of mood symptomatology led to the identification of three transdiagnostic groups of patients. Consistent with our hypothesis, the magnitude of subthreshold (hypo)manic symptoms was related to a greater clinical severity, regardless of the main categorical diagnosis.