The Hypomanic Check List
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Research Goals & Development of HCL
Page 3: Selection of Patients for HCL Studies
Page 4: Epidemiological Studies & Comparison with Other Instruments
Page 5: Publications & References
Page 6: Contact Information (webgroup/mailing list)
Goals
1) The first goal is to construct an instrument for self-assessment of hypomania, which can be used internationally in both primary care and psychiatry. It should help to reduce the world-wide problem of the under-diagnosis of major and minor bipolar disorders.
2) The second goal is to make the HCL scale trully international. The international applicability requires a transcultural development. In contrast to many other instruments that were developed in one language and later translated into others, the HCL-32 is not only translated but it is also developed and tested in as many languages and cultures as possible.
3) The third goal is to replicate the factor structure of the HCL-32 and its two sub-scales, and to define the optimal score which distinguishes best between diagnostic cases and non-cases.
4) The fourth goal is to compare the HCL-32 with the MDQ (mood disorder questionnaire) in terms of sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of bipolar-II disorder.
5) The fifth goal is to shorten the current scale with 32 items on the basis of the available data without a significant loss of sensitivity and specificity.
Development
Currently, the instrument is in the third phase of its development. A shorter version with 20 items (HCL-20) was applied repeatedly from 1986 to 1999 during four interviews in a prospective cohort study of a community sample in Switzerland, and the first time for self-assessment in a nation-wide study in psychiatric practice in France (Allilaire et al. 2001).
In a second phase, the checklist was extended to 32 items (HCL-32) in order to be tested and later reduced again in an international co-operation. The first studies with the HCL-32 were carried out in psychiatric out-patients from Italy and Sweden (Angst et al. 2005 in print JAD) and in community samples from Sweden and Germany.
In the third phase, additional studies were carried out in patient samples from Cagliari (Hardoy et al. 2005 submitted) and Barcelona (Vieta et al. in preparation); further research is ongoing in several other countries.
In a forth phase, the HCL-32 will be used in studies of advocacy groups (Gamian).
Translations (forth and back) of the HCL-32 exist into the following languages: Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Croatian, Russian, German, Greek, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Sardinian Italian, Hungarian, Taiwan Chinese and mainland Chinese. Currently the instrument is in translation into Arabic (Lebanon).
