The impact of childhood trauma on interpersonal relationship difficulties and smoking behavior in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder

ABSTRACT:The aim of this study is to examine how childhood trauma affects bipolar individuals' interpersonal relationships and smoking. It is also aimed to compare demographic and measurement variables with the control group. The study included 51 patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder according to the diagnostic criteria of DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5) who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and 48 control group who were not diagnosed with bipolar disorder but had childhood trauma. All participants who agreed to participate in the study were administered the sociodemographic data form prepared by the researcher and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-33) and the Interpersonal Problems Scale (IIP-32), which had been previously validated and reliable. The results were statistically analyzed with SPSS program. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between variables. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to understand the differences between the control group and individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This analysis was applied to evaluate whether the dependent variables showed significant differences between the groups. In the light of the study data, it was found that individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder had more childhood traumas than those who were not diagnosed with bipolar disorder. As a result, it was revealed that they had more interpersonal difficulties. It was revealed that childhood traumas had an effect on interpersonal relationship problems in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. However, it was found that childhood traumas had no effect on smoking, another variable, in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Keywords: Bipolar disorder, childhood trauma, interpersonal relationship difficulties, smoking