Psychosocial Functioning in Bipolar Disorder from a Social Justice Perspective

Previous research on psychosocial functioning in bipolar disorder (BD) has uncovered various factors that exacerbate disability over the course of illness, including illness severity (Burdick, Goldberg and Harrow, 2010; Haro et al., 2011; Mur, Portella, Martinez-Aran, Pifarre, & Vieta, 2009), anxiety (Boylan et al., 2004), substance use (Jaworski, Dubertret, Adès, & Gorwood, 2011), and cognitive impairment (Martino, Igoa, Marengo, Scapola, & Strejilevich, 2011). Accordingly, current efforts toward improving functional outcome in BD focus primarily on pharmacological and behavioral interventions that decrease mood symptoms (Fountoulakis & Vieta, 2008; Miklowitz, Goodwin, Bauer, & Geddes, 2008), attenuate anxiety (Rakofsky & Dunlop, 2011), reduce substance use (Weiss et al., 2009), and increase cognitive functioning (Deckersbach et al., 2010; Goldberg & Roy Chengappa, 2009). Whereas this approach addresses the neuro-psychological aspect of functional disability in BD, it largely ignores its social components.