BACKGROUND The bipolar spectrum disorders are considered an important and frequent psychiatric problem. The clinical complexity of these illnesses due to the coexistence of depressive and excitative phases is correlated with the global difficulty of adequate treatment; consequently, the prognosis is not optimal. For this reason, in recent years, novel nonpharmacologic physical approaches have b...

OBJECTIVE To assess both cognitive and affective empathy in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) during an acute manic or depressive episode. METHODS The study included 25 patients with BD (aged 35±14 years) during an acute manic episode, 25 bipolar patients (aged 41±14 years) during a depressive episode, and 25 healthy control subjects (aged 36±11 years). Cognitive and affective empathy were ...

Background: In the treatment of bipolar disorder in youths, often more than one medication should be prescribed. In the current study, we compared the efficacy and tolerability of the combination of lithium and quetiapine with lithium and risperidone in the treatment of manic or mixed episodes in children and adolescents. Methods: Thirty patients (aged 10-18 years) who were hospitalized for ...

Although rarely reported, the induction of hypomanic/manic episodes due to sudden or gradual cessation of antidepressant drugs is a phenomenon observed in clinical settings. Herein we present 2 patients that had manic episodes induced by gradual cessation of antidepressant drugs. Common features of both cases were as follows: patients were female; a major depressive episode was the reason for s...

Bipolar affective disorder (BD) diagnosis and initiation of appropriate treatment are often delayed, and this is associated with poorer outcomes, such as rapid cycling or cognitive decline. Therefore, identifying certain warning signs of a probable successive episode during the inter-episode phase is important for early intervention. We present the retrospective data of three cases of BD. Our f...

Aripiprazole is a second-generation antipsychotic with a unique pharmacologic receptor profile that has efficacy in the treatment and prevention of mania in bipolar I disorder. This article reviews the evidence supporting treatment of adults with bipolar I disorder using aripiprazole as monotherapy or adjunctively during acute mania and its utility as an intramuscular agent for agitation in man...

Schizophrenic (n = 24) and manic (n = 20) inpatients were compared with a normal comparison sample (n = 10) on memory and encoding performance for both self- and other-generated speech. It was found that the level of encoding, as indexed by the level of organization present in the recalled speech, predicted memory performance for both schizophrenic and normal samples. Schizophrenics were less e...

Introduction: According to the cumulative evidence, genes encoding GABA receptors inhibit neurotransmitters in CNS and are intricately involved in the pathogenesis of mood disorders. Based on this hypothesis, these genes may be expressed in bipolar patients. As a result, we evaluated the gene expressions of GABA-β3 and HT1D receptors to assess their associations with bipolar mood disorder....

OBJECTIVE Bipolar disorder is associated with poor pain outcomes, but the extant literature has not taken into account how mania or hypomania - a central feature of bipolar disorders - influences pain intensity. The objective of this study was to describe whether patients recalled experiencing reduced pain intensity during manic or hypomanic episodes. DESIGN AND SETTING This study used a retr...

BACKGROUND Episode duration, recurrence rates, and time spent in manic and depressive phases of bipolar disorder (BD) is not well defined for subtypes of the disorder. METHODS We reviewed the course, timing, and duration of episodes of mania and depression among 1130 clinically treated DSM-IV-TR BD patients of various types, and compared duration and rates as well as total proportion of time ...