Background: Previous studies suggest that gender, age at onset, and marital status act as risk factors for further recurrence initially during the course of affective disorder but not at a later stage. These studies did, however, not take the individual liability to recurrence into account.
Method: The effect of predictors of recurrence was estimated with the use of generalised linear mixed models in a case register study including a random sample of all patients admitted with primary affective disorder in Denmark during 1971-1993.
Results: In total, 7047 first admission patients with a diagnosis of affective disorder, depressive or manic/circular type were included in the analyses. The study confirmed that the effect of the type of disorder, age at first admission, and never being married decreased during the course of illness even when the individual liability to recurrence was taken into account. No differences in the effect of gender and in the effect of a recent divorce were found between early and later episodes and the effect of a recent death of a spouse seemed to increase during the course of illness. The risk of recurrence increased with every new episode for all sub-groups of patients.
Conclusion: The effect of some, but not all, predictors of recurrence decline during the course of affective illness. The number of previous episodes predicts recurrence in most subgroups of patients.
Limitation: The data relate to re-admissions rather than recurrence.
Clinical relevance: The study underscores the importance of the illness process itself.