Prosocial behaviors across bipolar and major depressive mood disorders: A preliminary investigation

Bipolar and major depressive disorders are both serious and costly psychiatric disorders. Yet extant research largely focuses on social functioning impairments in mood disorders despite some work suggesting areas of adaptive social functioning. The present study presents a preliminary investigation aiming to further examine distinct facets of prosocial behavior using previously validated survey and behavioral measures among a clinically diagnosed sample of adults with bipolar I disorder (BD; n = 19), major depressive disorder (MDD; n = 28) and non-psychiatric controls (CTL; n = 29). A subset of individuals with BD and MDD were prospectively followed at a 6-month and 12-month follow-up time point. Findings suggest that BD and MDD individuals did not differ in prosocial behavior across eight distinct measures compared to the CTL group. Follow-up findings suggest that prosocial behavior may be associated with better prospective social support outcomes in the MDD and BDD groups. Although these results are preliminary due to the modest sample size, they suggest that some aspects of prosocial behaviors may be preserved among individuals with bipolar and unipolar mood disorders.