The validity and utility of patients' daily ratings of mood and impairment in clinical trials of bipolar disorder.
OBJECTIVE
Traditional cross-sectional clinician-rated measures have limited use in clinical trials of bipolar disorder. We examine the validity and usefulness of patients' daily ratings of mood and functional impairment during a treatment trial.


METHODS
Ten subjects with bipolar II disorder completed daily ratings of depression severity, depression, hypomania and functional impairment over a 9-month trial. Ratings were correlated with clinician-rated measures at nine time points to determine validity. Mood ratings were contrasted with cross-sectional data for one subject to determine usefulness of such fine-grained data.


RESULTS
Moderate to large correlations were found between patients' and clinicians' ratings of mood and impairment for most of the nine time points. The utility of the patients' ratings relative to clinician-rated cross-sectional measures was also illustrated.


CONCLUSIONS
Results support the validity and usefulness of patients' daily mood ratings.
Parker
G
G
School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, and Black Dog Institute, Sydney, Australia. g.parker@unsw.edu.au
Tully
L
L
Olley
A
A
Barnes
C
C
D000203:Activities of Daily Living / Q000523:psychology; D000339:Affect / Q000187:drug effects*; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000188:drug therapy*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D006801:Humans; D008499:Medical Records; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012650:Self Disclosure; D017367:Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D013223:Statistics as Topic
D017367:Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors