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. 2022 Aug;272(5):873-885.
doi: 10.1007/s00406-022-01380-1. Epub 2022 Jan 27.

Affective lability and social functioning in severe mental disorders

Margrethe Collier Høegh  1 , Ingrid Melle  2 , Sofie R Aminoff  2   3 , Stine Holmstul Olsen  2 , Synve Hoffart Lunding  2 , Torill Ueland  2   4 , Trine Vik Lagerberg  2
Affiliations

Affective lability and social functioning in severe mental disorders

Margrethe Collier Høegh et al. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2022 Aug.

Abstract

Social functioning is impaired in severe mental disorders despite clinical remission, illustrating the need to identify other mechanisms that hinder psychosocial recovery. Affective lability is elevated and associated with an increased clinical burden in psychosis spectrum disorders. We aimed to investigate putative associations between affective lability and social functioning in 293 participants with severe mental disorders (schizophrenia- and bipolar spectrum), and if such an association was independent of well-established predictors of social impairments. The Affective Lability Scale (ALS-SF) was used to measure affective lability covering the dimensions of anxiety-depression, depression-elation and anger. The interpersonal domain of the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) was used to measure social functioning. Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate associations between affective lability and social functioning, followed by a hierarchical multiple regression and follow-up analyses in diagnostic subgroups. Features related to premorbid and clinical characteristics were entered as independent variables together with the ALS-SF scores. We found that higher scores on all ALS-SF subdimensions were significantly associated with lower social functioning (p < 0.005) in the total sample. For the anxiety-depression dimension of the ALS-SF, this association persisted after controlling for potential confounders such as premorbid social functioning, duration of untreated illness and current symptoms (p = 0.019). Our results indicate that elevated affective lability may have a negative impact on social functioning in severe mental disorders, which warrants further investigation. Clinically, it might be fruitful to target affective lability in severe mental disorders to improve psychosocial outcomes.

Keywords: Affective lability; Affective lability Scale Short Form (ALS-SF); Bipolar spectrum; Psychotic disorders; Schizophrenia spectrum; Social functioning.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The relationship between affective lability and social functioning split by the presence of lifetime psychosis
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The relationship between affective lability and social functioning split by diagnostic group
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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