Psychiatrists have cautioned against the use of antidepressants alone in people with bipolar disorders,
saying they could worsen a patient’s condition by causing a destabilisation in mood.
Dr Ajeet Singh and Professor Michael Berk, consultant psychiatrists from the University of Melbourne,
state in the current edition of Australian Prescriber that the goal of treatment in bipolar disorder is to
stabilise mood, and antidepressants may defeat this purpose if they are not taken with other drugs.
“Patients may need an antidepressant, but this must be taken with a mood-stabilising drug.
Antidepressants place patients at risk of switching to elevated phases of the disorder and rapid cycling
patterns,” they say in the article. [continue reading…]
Bipolar Disorder
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Link to watch the video  of Newsweek’s featured cover story
Welcome to Max’s World
Bipolar disorder has come out of the shadows. Most people have heard of the disease, which used to be shrouded in stigma and mystery. But there’s still a great deal unknown about how and why the disorder arises, what’s happening in the brains of those afflicted, and how best to treat it. NEWSWEEK’s Mary Carmichael asked the psychiatrists and psychologists who are conducting cutting-edge research to explain what they do know. (Read more about how bipolar disease is diagnosed in children here and find out how parents of bipolar children can get help here.)
 Link to read the article The Biology of Bipolar Disorder
Source: Newsweek
A featured recent post in the BPS Research Digest
People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are emotionally fragile, impulsive, suffer from low mood, have intense unstable personal relationships and – according to a handful of studies – they also have enhanced empathy.
But new research by Judith Flury and colleagues shows the idea that BPD patients have enhanced empathy is a spurious finding reflecting the methodological design of prior studies combined with the fact BPD patients are particularly difficult to read.
FLURY, J., ICKES, W., SCHWEINLE, W. (2008). The borderline empathy effect: Do high BPD individuals have greater empathic ability? Or are they just more difficult to “read”? Journal of Research in Personality, 42(2), 312-332. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2007.05.008
A new study by Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University researchers reports that fewer than half the patients previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder based on a comprehensive, psychiatric diagnostic interview–the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID).
The study concludes that while recent reports indicate that there is a problem with underdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, an equal if not greater problem exists with overdiagnosis. The study was published online by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Principle investigator Mark Zimmerman, M.D., will present the findings at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association on Wednesday, May 7. [continue reading…]
