BACKGROUND

Knowledge about psychopathologic presentations of mania in current clinical practice has to be refined in order to improve diagnosis and treatment.

METHODS

One thousand ninety manic patients included in the French National Study EPIMAN-II Mille were submitted to a cluster analysis on the basis of multiple variables related to the history of bipolar illness and symptoms of the current episode.

RESULTS

Four clusters were identified: "classic mania" (29.3% of patients) with less severe mania; "psychotic mania" (22.7%) with psychotic symptoms, more severe mania, younger age and social impairment; "depressive mania" (30.4%) characterized by female gender, suicide attempts, high number of previous episodes and residual symptoms; and "dual mania" (17.6%) characterized by male gender, substance use, earlier onset and poor compliance. Patients groups also differed in manic symptoms, marital status, stressors preceding illness onset, prior diagnoses, first episode polarity and temperamental characteristics.

LIMITATIONS

Cross-sectional assessment of patients.

CONCLUSIONS

In comparing our findings with those of four prior cluster analytic studies, we integrate clinical characteristics of mania subtypes found in this very large representative French sample in contemporary practice, we suggest how such convergence of data may help improve earlier recognition, differential response to different treatments, and prevention of these subtypes. We finally suggest that such subtyping might provide clues to phenotype delineation suitable for pharmacogenetic investigations.