What goes up can come down? A preliminary investigation of emotion reactivity and emotion recovery in bipolar disorder

BackgroundHow is emotion disrupted in bipolar disorder? Two studies are presented that adopt a multi-method approach to investigate emotion reactivity and emotion recovery in bipolar I disorder.MethodsAcross both studies, individuals with inter-episode bipolar disorder and healthy controls were shown three emotion-eliciting films (neutral, happy, and sad) and experiential and physiological responses were measured. In Study 1, bipolar (BD; n = 23) and non-clinical control (NC; n = 24) participants' emotional reactivity during film clips was assessed. In Study 2, a separate sample of BD (n = 23) and NC (n = 25) participants' emotion recovery was assessed after the film clips were assessed.ResultsResults indicated that the BD group exhibited increased self-reported positive emotion and respiratory sinus arrhythmia across all films compared to the NC group. There were no group differences in emotion recovery.DiscussionTaken together, these results suggest that bipolar disorder is associated with increased positive emotion reactivity, but not emotion recovery, across contexts.