Correlates of depression in bipolar disorder

Abstract

We analyse time series from 100 patients with bipolar disorder for correlates of depression symptoms. As the sampling interval is non-uniform, we quantify the extent of missing and irregular data using new measures of compliance and continuity . We find that uniformity of response is negatively correlated with the standard deviation of sleep ratings ( ρ = –0.26, p = 0.01). To investigate the correlation structure of the time series themselves, we apply the Edelson–Krolik method for correlation estimation. We examine the correlation between depression symptoms for a subset of patients and find that self-reported measures of sleep and appetite/weight show a lower average correlation than other symptoms. Using surrogate time series as a reference dataset, we find no evidence that depression is correlated between patients, though we note a possible loss of information from sparse sampling.