Mania Symptoms' Complex Relations With Psychosocial Dysfunction and Personality Traits: The Role of Positive and Negative Affect

Mania symptoms are impairing, multidimensional, and complexly related to other mood and psychopathology dimensions. For example, manic activation (e.g., restlessness and flight of ideas) and euphoria (e.g., expansive and grandiose mood) correlate with both dysphoria (e.g., depressed mood and worry) and well-being (e.g., hopefulness and energy). This empirical overlap may distort or obscure mania's observed relations to psychosocial dysfunction and personality traits. Adults (N = 605; M = 46 years old; 57% women), recruited from community mental health centers and by random telephone dialing, completed mood (Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptomatology), personality (Personality Inventory for DSM-5; Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality), and psychosocial functioning (e.g., Disability Assessment Schedule; Social Functioning Questionnaire) measures. We tested cross-sectional relations of manic activation and euphoria with functioning and trait dimensions. Using linear correlation and regression analyses, we interpreted results significant at p < 0.01 with effect size r ≥ 0.10. Part correlations (controlling for dysphoria or well-being) that were stronger or reversed compared to whole correlations indicated statistical suppression. Manic activation correlated widely with dysfunction (e.g., disability and social problems) and traits (e.g., negative affectivity, disinhibition, and psychoticism). Well-being suppressed manic euphoria's relations, particularly with dysfunction, negative affectivity, disinhibition, and psychoticism. Dysphoria also suppressed manic activation's relations with trait positive temperament and related dimensions. The full extent of manic euphoria and activation's relations with psychosocial dysfunction and personality became clear only after accounting for concurrent well-being or dysphoria. The placement of mania in multidimensional symptom assessment systems may advance by considering these suppression situations.