[A likely course of bipolar disorder: restituto ad integrum or defect. Second part]

Although the more favorable prognosis was essential to bipolar disorder, persisting alterations concerning psychosocial functioning and psychopathology are not rare. A number of patients develops persistent impairment, a fact that refers to the initial 25% of patients shown in the literature (through naturalistic and long-term studies) as having poor recovery. Present studies intend to correlate with a neuroanatomy and a neuropsychology of bipolar disorder. It has been suggested that neuropsychological impairment persists during the euthymic state but has been confounded partly by mild affective symptoms in remitted patients (we emphasize the importance of treating bipolar depression).