The hypomanic personality scale: a measure of personality and/or bipolar symptoms?

The Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS) was designed to measure a predispositional personality style to bipolar disorder. Its properties have largely been assessed in non-clinical samples. We undertook a number of analyses to determine if it is likely to be a measure of actual personality style or is confounded by items capturing hypomanic/manic mood symptoms. A total of 112 bipolar and 164 unipolar patients completed the measure. Several principal components analyses were undertaken and associations were examined between HPS items and scores on a measure designed to identify bipolar disorder--the Mood Swings Questionnaire (MSQ). Principal components analyses generated a similar set of four factors in both the unipolar and bipolar sample sub-sets and congruent with previous analyses undertaken in non-clinical samples, suggesting identification of normative dimensions that underpin hypomanic and manic mood states. A number of HPS items correlated highly with the MSQ. Results suggest that HPS is unlikely to simply be a measure of personality style and appears strongly confounded by hypomanic/manic mood symptoms. The measure may therefore--in its current form--be inappropriate for at-risk research seeking to determine the capacity of personality style to predict onset of a bipolar disorder.