Validation study of the Spanish brief version of TEMPS-A.

INTRODUCTION: Identifying affective temperaments could be useful both for understanding the normal behavioral variations in the general population and to establish if there is a clinical predisposition to certain disorders. Five affective temperaments have been proposed: depressive, cyclothymic, hyperthymic, irritable and anxious. Original instrument for measuring them (TEMPS-A) is a 110-item scale but many short versions in different languages have been validated. The aim of this study was to obtain a short self-administered Spanish version of TEMPS-A with good psychometric properties. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A sample of 550 students who answered the argentinean version of TEMPS-A was included, after psychometric analysis a comparison between inpatients with major depression and their matched controls by sex and age who answered the brief version was performed to get an external validation. RESULTS: The sample was composed by 298 (54.2%) women. The mean age was 23.3 year (SD=6.2). A forced five factor analysis was performed. The 7 items with the highest factorial load (more than 0.350) for each subscale were included in the brief version. The Cronbach alpha's ranged from 0.690 to .800. The most prevalent temperament was hyperthymic followed by cyclothymic for students sample. Similarities between students and controls sample were observed, but not with patients with major depression. CONCLUSIONS: This brief Spanish version of TEMPS-A (35 items) has good psychometric properties and can be used in general and clinical population.

Affective temperaments and antidepressant response in the clinical management of mood disorders.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of a relationship between affective temperament and antidepressant treatment response in mood disorder patients. METHODS: The lifetime history of antidepressant response of 90 bipolar disorder patients and 88 major depressive disorder patients were retrospectively evaluated and then assigned to one of four subgroups: complete response (CR), partial response (PR), no response (NR), and antidepressant associated mania response (AAMR). Using TEMPS-Rio de Janeiro - the brief Brazilian version of TEMPS-A - we compared affective temperament subscale scores across these groups. RESULTS: We observed a statistically significant relationship between depressive and anxious affective temperaments and no antidepressant response. In bipolar disorder patients, cyclothymic temperament (p<0.01) and hyperthymic temperament (p<0.05) were associated with antidepressant-associated mania. Hyperthymic temperament was associated with complete antidepressant responses in major depressive disorder patients. LIMITATIONS: The evaluation of antidepressant response was retrospective. CONCLUSIONS: Our data are consistent with the theory that affective temperament traits are factors that can influence the antidepressant response and the recovery from depressive episodes, but more longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this theory and our findings.