Bipolar Disorder News and Research

Latest Bipolar Disorder News and Research

Novel device helps monitor mental illness

Psychiatric researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine will report important new findings from a study of patients with bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia at the upcoming meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, to be held in San Diego May 17-20.

17 May 2007

Bipolar all too often misdiagnosed

According to researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) there are twice as many Americans with bipolar disorder as previously thought, and many are untreated.

9 May 2007

Bipolar disorder - the clue may be in the genes

The first scan of the entire human genetic code has revealed that developing bipolar disorder may to some extent depend on the combined effects of variations in many different genes in the brain, none of which is powerful enough to cause the disease by itself.

9 May 2007

Genetics of bipolar disorder

The likelihood of developing bipolar disorder depends in part on the combined, small effects of variations in many different genes in the brain, none of which is powerful enough to cause the disease by itself, a new study shows.

9 May 2007

4 percent of US adults have some form of bipolar disorder

Approximately 4.4 percent of U.S. adults may have some form of bipolar disorder during some point in their lifetime, including about 2.4 percent with a "sub-threshold" condition, according to an article in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

8 May 2007

Electroconvulsive therapy helps patients with severe depression who don't respond to other treatments

Electroconvulsive therapy has been shown to be a highly effective, safe, and even life-saving treatment for persistent and severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

8 May 2007

Bipolar disorder may be more accurately characterized as a spectrum disorder

A new study supports earlier estimates of the prevalence of bipolar disorder in the U.S. population, and suggests the illness may be more accurately characterized as a spectrum disorder.

8 May 2007

Gene malfunctions cause schizophrenia, depression symptoms in mice

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that malfunction of a gene that had been associated with schizophrenia and depression does indeed cause symptoms of those disorders.

4 May 2007

Childhood-onset bipolar disorder is more common than believed

In bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive disorder, a person experiences mood changes that fluctuate between periods of abnormally high energy and extreme depression.

2 May 2007

New human medications found in fish in Texas

Baylor University researchers have found the residue of three new human medications in fish living in the Pecan Creek in North Texas.

2 May 2007

Difficult to distinguish bipolar symptoms in children

At least one-third of the time, the symptoms of bipolar disorder first appear in childhood or adolescence.

26 Apr 2007

Psychotherapeutic drug spending surges

Spending on prescription drugs to treat depression, anxiety, pain, schizophrenia and other conditions climbed from $7.9 billion in 1997 to $20 billion in 2004 - over a 150 percent increase, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

25 Apr 2007

Symposium on depression and bipolar disorder

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will hold its 21st annual Mood Disorders Symposium titled Bipolar Revisited: Where We've Been, Where We're Going, at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, April 24, to draw attention to new findings in basic and clinical research on depression and bipolar disorder.

24 Apr 2007

New understanding of schizophrenia

New research helps bridge an important gap in understanding schizophrenia, providing the best evidence to date that defects in the brain's white matter are a key contributor to the disease, which affects about 1 percent of people worldwide.

24 Apr 2007

Discovery of molecular mechanism that alters strength of higher brain network connections

Yale School of Medicine and University of Crete School of Medicine researchers report in Cell April 20 the first evidence of a molecular mechanism that dynamically alters the strength of higher brain network connections.

21 Apr 2007

Lithium increases gray matter in bipolar brains

Neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that lithium, long the standard treatment for bipolar disorder, increases the amount of gray matter in the brains of patients with the illness.

11 Apr 2007

Eslicarbazepine shows promise for treating epileptic seizures

A new study appearing in the latest issue of Epilepsia shows that a new drug called Eslicarbazepine (ESL) shows promise as a treatment for epilepsy patients whose symptoms remain uncontrolled with existing medications.

7 Apr 2007

Effectiveness of psychosocial treatments for bipolar disorder

This is a follow up study to one released last Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine on the effects of antidepressants in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Both studies, called STEP-BD, were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

4 Apr 2007

Intensive psychotherapy most effective for treating bipolar depression

Patients taking medications to treat bipolar disorder are more likely to get well faster and stay well if they receive intensive psychotherapy, according to results from the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

4 Apr 2007

Intensive therapy helps in battle against bipolar disorder

New results from the largest federally funded bipolar study ever conducted show that patients who receive psychotherapy in addition to medication get better faster from bipolar disorder's debilitating depression and stay better longer, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher involved in the study.

4 Apr 2007