Psychotherapy of bipolar disorder: a review

Bipolar disorder is often only partially treated by medication alone, which has led to recent developments in the adjunctive psychological treatment of bipolar disorder. This paper aims to examine the current evidence for effectiveness of psychological interventions for bipolar disorder and to identify issues for future research in this area.

A review of outcome studies of psychological interventions reported since 1990, including psychoeducation, cognitive-behavioural, interpersonal and social rhythm and psychoanalytic therapy.

The research to date indicates that a range of psychological approaches appear to benefit people with bipolar disorder. The clearest evidence is for individual CBT which impacts on symptoms, social functioning and risk of relapse.

Many studies lack appropriate control groups and standardised measures of symptoms and diagnosis. Better designed studies would reduce the risk of over-estimates of effect sizes and subsequent failure to replicate. Further developments of psychotherapy need to be based on clear theoretical models of bipolar disorder.

Many current studies are uncontrolled and of poor quality leading to a risk of over-estimating effectiveness of some interventions. Suggestions are made for future research including improving quality of studies, basing treatment developments on clear theoretical models and identifying specific treatment components for particular phases of the bipolar illness course.