CONTEXT Epidemiological, clinical and familial studies indicate that anxiety disorders (ADs) are highly comorbid in persons with bipolar disorder (BPD). The phenomenological overlap between ADs and BPD is reported more frequently in individuals with female predominant bipolar presentations (e.g., bipolar II disorder). Anxiety comorbidity in the BPD population poses a serious hazard. For example...

Morbidity, mortality and economic consequences of bipolar affective disorder are very important to be evaluated because many of the costs entailed by this psychiatric disorder come from indirect costs due to inadequate diagnosis and treatment and from the characteristics of the affective symptoms itself. Psychotherapy focuses on diagnosis and the newest pharmacotherapy determines a decreasing o...

BACKGROUND The hippocampus plays a central role in memory formation. There is considerable evidence of abnormalities in hippocampal structure and function in schizophrenia, which may differentiate it from bipolar disorder. However, no previous studies have compared hippocampal activation in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder directly. METHOD Fifteen patients with schizophrenia, 14 patients wi...

BACKGROUND While various guidelines on the treatment of bipolar disorder have been published over the last decades, adherence to guidelines has been reported to be low. In this article we describe the protocol of a nationwide, multicenter, longitudinal, non-intervention study on the treatment of bipolar disorder in the Netherlands. Study aims are to provide information on the nature and content...

background : the existing evidence about the clinical situations of the bipolar patients with opioid dependence is scarce. the present study was carried out to compare the clinical features and course of the bipolar disorder type i regarding the two subgroups of opioid dependent and non-dependent. methods : there were 178 adult patients with bipolar disorder type i consecutively referred to the...

objective: vitiligo is a rare side effect of carbamazepine whose exact mechanism is unknown. the aim of this report is to describe a single case of vitiligo induced by carbamazepine . methods: the case was a patient with bipolar i disorder whose medications were changed from valproate to carbamazepine and who developed vitiligo after a short while. we followed the case for about four years when...

BACKGROUND Although some studies indicate that bipolar disorder causes high health care resources consumption, no study is available addressing a cost estimation of bipolar disorder in Spain. The aim of this observational study was to evaluate healthcare resource utilization and the associated direct cost in patients with manic episodes in the Spanish setting. METHODS Retrospective descriptiv...

BACKGROUND There is a long-standing belief that creativity is coupled with psychopathology. AIMS To test this alleged association and to investigate whether any such association is the result of environmental or genetic factors. METHOD We performed a nested case-control study based on Swedish registries. The likelihood of holding a creative occupation in individuals who had received in-pati...

BACKGROUND Several second generation antipsychotics (SGAs) received FDA approval for bipolar disorder in the 2000s. Although efficacious, they have been costly and may cause significant side effects. Little is known about the factors associated with prescribers' decisions to initiate SGA prescriptions for this condition. METHODS We gathered administrative data from the Department of Veterans ...

BACKGROUND In the past, the first goal of bipolar disorder treatment was the reduction of symptoms of mania or depression, rather than the recovery of social functioning. Recently, as a result of an increased emphasis on patient needs, the concept of quality of life (QoL) has been brought into the treatment of physical illnesses. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The purpose of the present study was to ex...