Bipolar Disorder
1Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
2Faculty of Psychology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
3Bipolar Disorders Program, Institute of Neuroscience, University of Barcelona, 08193 Catalonia, Spain
Bipolar Disorder
Description
We want to stimulate researchers and clinicians to explore new areas regarding various features of bipolar disorder and try to define the most important aspects of the course of the illness. Bipolar disorder affects about 5% of the population with dangerous repercussions such as cause of morbidity and mortality; it jeopardizes the quality of life on a global level. It is common that patients have a history of unemployment, absenteeism, divorce, low levels of education, and frequent hospitalizations.There are more effective therapeutic techniques, and pharmacological, chronotherapeutic (total sleep deprivation, light therapy, and sleep phase advance), and somatic ones (such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation). Various papers have shown how subjects affected by this illness are strongly sensible not only to circadian variations, but also to stressful life events. Changes in daily routine and unexpected stressors have shown to be accurate predictors of relapses also in subjects that have been stabilized for a long period of time. For this reason, psychoeducational interventions and interpersonal and social rhythms therapy (IPSRT) have shown to be effective in the long-term clinical management of the disorder. This disorder often presents itself in comorbidity with other psychiatric illnesses such as generalized anxiety, panic, and personality disorders. Bipolar disorder and personality disorders often overlap for clinical and psychopathological features, and various specific psychotherapeutic techniques have been designed for these types of patients. In order to understand the complexity of the illness, by genetic and brain imaging studies we can attempt to define a better endophenotype of the disorder. We invite authors to present original articles and review articles that will address the problem connected with this area. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Bipolar disorder and personality disorders
- Seasonality, clinical, genetics, and imaging studies of bipolar disorder
- Cronobiological deregulation and chronobiological treatments
- Long-term pharmacological treatment strategies and alternative augmentation tecniques such as somatic treatment
- Psychoeducational and psychotherapeutic interventions and genetics of psychopaharmacolgical treatments and of biological clock.
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