To Investigate How Useful Of The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) In The Screening Of Bipolar Disorder

Background Bipolar disorder is characterized by high incidence, high mortality and high mutilation, and has been insufficiently diagnosed and treated in clinical work, with lower incidence identified by epidemiological work. Furthermore, as it is difficult to classify its clinical symptoms, it is crucial to find out a proper quantitative indicator for the screening of bipolar disorder.Objective To investigate how useful of the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) in the screening of bipolar disorder. Methods Forty-eight hospitalized patients with depression were firstly assessed by MDQ and then reassessed by the SCID-Ⅰ/P (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders, Research Version For Patients) for comparison.Results Of all the48patients,13(27.1%) were identified as bipolar disorder by MDQ with cutoff score of7, and17(35.4%) were diagnosed as bipolar disorder by SCID-Ⅰ/P in which11cases whose score of MDQ were larger than7. analysis used by ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve) showed that the sensitivity and specificity of MDQ with cutoff score of7again SCID-Ⅰ/P were0.647,0.935respectively. the17cases who were diagnosed as bipolar disease by SCID-Ⅰ/P responded to all13items of MDQ with positive response rate no less than50%:easy distraction, thought raced, more energy than usual, more talkative, more active, excitement, less sleep while following items had low positive response rate:irritability, risk behaviours and more interested in sex. the results imply that MDQ and SCID-Ⅰ/P are compatible with each other. With the cut off point set as6points,12cases with bipolar disorder were diagnosed by MDQ, and there were29out of31unipolar depressed patients scored less than6, showing a sensitivity of0.706and a specificity of0.935. When the cut off point was set as5points,14out of17cases were diagnosed as bipolar disorder with MDQ and26of31cases with unipolar depression scored less than5, which implied that the specificity of0.839and a higher sensitivity of0.824.Conclusion There is a relatively high proportion of unidentified bipolar disorder in hospitalized depressed patients. MDQ may be helpful for clinicians to improve the diagnosis of bipolar disease. As the cut off point of screening for bipolar disorder,5points is more reasonable for clinical use.