Longitudinal outcome and medication noncompliance among manic patients with and without mood-incongruent psychotic features.

The prognostic utility of mood-incongruent psychotic features was examined in a sample of 23 hospitalized manic patients. Patients were initially subdivided according to whether they met Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) for schizoaffective, mainly affective (mood-incongruent) manic disorder (SAM; N = 11) or RDC primary manic (mood-congruent or nonpsychotic) manic disorder (PM; N = 12). Patients were then followed over a 9-month posthospitalization period and rated every 3 months for relapse status, symptom severity, social adjustment, and medication noncompliance. Patients with SAM and PM did not differ at follow-up on rates or timing of manic or depressive relapses or on cycling of symptoms of mood disorder. However, at follow-up, SAM patients had more severe positive and negative psychotic symptoms and poorer social adjustment, and were less medically compliant than PM patients. Results are consistent with the view that mania with mood-incongruent psychotic features is a poor-prognosis subtype of bipolar disorder.