Recognising prodromes reduces manic relapses

Despite modern drug treatment, bipolar disorder (manic-depressive psychosis) has a high rate of relapse. Prodromes, or early symptoms of relapse, consistently appear before mania and depression. On p 149 Perry et al show that training patients to recognise prodromes and seek early treatment reduces the number of manic relapses and improves both social function and employment. Such training does not reduce the number of depressive relapses. Recognition and early treatment of manic prodromes is efficacious, but cost effectiveness studies are required before the treatment is systematically introduced into the NHS.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Randomised controlled trial of efficacy of teaching patients with bipolar disorder to identify early symptoms of relapse and obtain treatment
Alison Perry, Nicholas Tarrier, Richard Morriss, Eilis McCarthy, and Kate Limb
BMJ 1999 318: 149-153. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ