Lifestyle interventions targeting dietary habits and exercise in bipolar disorder: A systematic review

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a serious mental illness associated with a high risk of medical comorbidities, long-term disability and premature death. This systematic review examined the current literature on therapeutic interventions targeting nutrition, physical activity and wellness in BD and collecting health-related measures such as mood and course of illness.

Scopus (all databases), Pubmed and Ovid Medline were systematically searched with no language or year restrictions, up to June 2015, for studies focusing on lifestyle interventions in BD. Search terms were related to bipolar disorder, nutrition, physical activity, wellbeing, psychosocial interventions and course of illness. We hand searched content pages of Bipolar Disorders and Journal of Affective Disorders and checked references of relevant reviews and dissertations to identify additional papers.

After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria to identified hits, this literature search retrieved six papers. Overall findings point towards a beneficial role of lifestyle interventions on mood, weight, blood pressure, lipid profile, physical activity and overall wellbeing. Methodological limitations include small sample size, gender ratio imbalance, inconsistencies in terms of laboratory measures, and lack of randomized controlled trials and absence of follow-up and longitudinal studies to determine the benefits of these factors on clinical and functional outcomes over time

Lifestyle interventions in BD targeting nutrition, exercise, wellbeing alongside beliefs, coping strategies and attitudes towards health show promise in reducing the risk of comorbid ailments in BD. There is still a strong need for studies a) developing interventions which are informed by the patient's input and b) examining the effectiveness of such interventions targeting general wellness using well-controlled trials.