The relationship between perceived parental attitude, temperament, and chronotype in children of parents with bipolar disorder

Objective: Our study aimed to compare the temperament characteristics, parental attitudes and chronotype characteristics of children of bipolar and healthy parents, and to examine the relationship between temperament characteristics, parental attitudes and chronotype in the children of bipolar parents.Method: Children aged 10-15 years of bipolar diagnosed parents referred to us and children and adolescents aged 10-15 years whose parents did not have a history of psychiatric disorders were included in the study. Among the cases included in the study; The children were asked to fill out the Temperament and Character Inventory and the Parenting Attitude Scale, and the parents were asked to fill out the Childhood Chronotype Questionnaire.Results: In our study, no difference was found between the children of parents with bipolar disorder and the children of healthy parents in the control group in terms of the acceptance-involvement and supervision sub-dimensions of parental attitudes, and the psychological autonomy sub-dimension was found to have a significantly higher score in the case group. When examined in terms of Childhood Temperament and Character Inventory scores, it was found that the perseverance sub-dimension scale scores in our case group were almost significantly high. When we examine our study sample in terms of chronotype characteristics; It was found that the evening chronotype was higher in the case group than in the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant.Conclusion: We think that our current study will contribute to the literature as it is, to our knowledge, the first study examining the temperament characteristics, parental attitudes and chronotype characteristics of children of parents diagnosed with bipolar.In our study, it is thought that the higher persistence scale scores in the case group may be due to the fact that these children may have developed their psychological resilience while struggling with the possible challenging conditions of having a parent with a mental disorder, and we think that studies conducted on a larger sample size in which persistence and resilience are investigated together will contribute to the literature. It is thought that the permanent daylight saving time, early school hours and media usage level in our country may have affected the chronotype preference of the children and adolescents in our study and therefore our findings. We think that it will be important for the preventive mental health of children and adolescents, especially high-risk children, to take the healthy sleep-wake cycle into consideration when planning school hours and practices such as permanent summer time.