Function impairments common in remitted bipolar patients

MedWire News: People with bipolar disorder who have not experienced mood symptoms for some time and are considered to be in remission still experience significant impairments in various areas of their lives, such as personal relationships, mental abilities (cognition) and working life, research shows.

Dr Eduard Vieta (University of Barcelona, Spain) and colleagues studied 71 patients, aged at least 18 years, with bipolar disorder who were in remission and 61 mentally healthy participants.

All the participants underwent a variety of tests to assess their ability to function in areas of their lives associated with occupation, relationships, cognition, financial issues and leisure time.

Analysis of the test results revealed that 60% of the bipolar disorder patients had overall functional impairment, despite an absence of mood symptoms, compared with just 13.1% of the other participants.

Further analysis showed that older age, residual depressive symptoms, previous mixed episodes and previous hospitalizations were significantly associated with impaired functioning among the bipolar patients.

Writing in the journal Bipolar Disorders, the researchers comment: “A substantial proportion of bipolar patients experience unfavourable functioning, suggesting that there is a significant degree of morbidity [disability due to illness] and dysfunction associated with bipolar disorder, even during remission periods.”

They conclude: “Psychosocial interventions in combination with pharmacotherapy should be considered to treat residual depressive symptoms and enhance the level of functioning. In addition, low rates of functional recovery as shown here underscore the importance of including specific functioning measures as well as symptomatic assessments in the comprehensive evaluation of bipolar disorder.”