short-term family-focused psycho-educational program for bipolar mood disorder in mashhad

background: bipolar mood disorder type 1 is one of the most serious psychiatric disorders. we aimed to assess the efficacy of a short-term family–focused treatment for patients with bipolar mood disorder type 1 in a one-year follow-up period.   methods: sixty patients with bipolar mood disorder and acute mania episodes who referred to ibn-e-sina psychiatric hospital in mashhad were recruited. half of them were randomly assigned to the psycho-education group. their available adult family members received a psycho-educational training session before the patients' discharge from the hospital. all patients received concurrent appropriate pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. all the patients were evaluated by a blind home-visit team every 3 months for a period of one year. the evaluation included the number of psychiatric visits, patients' adherence, relapse status, number of re-hospitalizations, and time to relapse.   results: fifty-seven patients completed the trial. in the experimental group, there were four patients with relapse (13.79%) and in the control group nine patients (31.58%) had relapse of the disorder (p=0.006). the mean time of taking medications in the education group was 11.41 months. this time was 9.14 months in the control group (p<0.001). there was also a significant difference between the two groups in terms of frequency of psychiatric visits (p<0.001).   conclusion: short–term family-focused psycho-education is an effective adjunct to pharmacotherapy for bipolar mood disorder. further studies are needed to evaluate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of long-term family-focused psycho-educational treatment for patients with bipolar mood disorder.