Sex is a powerful modulator of disease susceptibility, course and outcome. The gene CACNA1C is among the best replicated vulnerability genes of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether sex and a variant in CACNA1C (rs10774035 as a proxy for the well-acknowledged risk variant rs1006737) influence psychosocial adaptation in a large German patient...

Editorial A few weeks ago, after many years of intensive work, the much-awaited fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was published. It is still the case today that psychiatric diagnoses seem to be more consensus-based than validity-based (Cuthbert and Insel 2013; Bschor et al. 2012; Berk 2013) something that DSM-5 will also be unable to change. In s...

BACKGROUND Bipolar psychopathology has traditionally been defined by categorical diagnoses. However, these disorders may simply reflect the extremes of a broader spectrum of clinical and subclinical bipolar psychopathology. METHOD The present study examined the validity of the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS) as a measure of bipolar spectrum psychopathology in 305 young adults using experien...

A comparison of clinical characteristics in bipolar I disorder and antidepressantassociated mania/hypomania Objective: Although hypomania/mania during antidepressant treatment is not rare, it is often neglected by clinicians. As a result of the recent developments in this topic, bipolarity is now accepted as a wide spectrum. Forty percent of the patients with bipolar disorder have been misdiagn...

background drug addiction, obsessive compulsive disorders (ocd), and other anxiety disorders are the disorders most commonly found in patients with bipolar disorder. objectives the purpose of this study was to identify the factors affecting the risk of drug addiction, obsessive compulsive disorders, and other anxiety disorders in patients with bipolar disorder. patients and methods in this retr...

OBJECTIVE Bipolar spectrum disorders may often go undiagnosed or unrecognized. The aim of this study was to determine the proportion of bipolar disorder symptoms in Iranian patients with a major depressive episode. METHODS 313 patients with a current DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th ed. Text rev.) diagnosed with a major depressive episode entered this cross...

1. Agents called ‘‘antidepressants’’ also treat multiple anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder; impulsive/compulsive spectrum disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder; eating disorders, such as bulimia; and pain conditions, such as neuropathic pain. Agents called ‘‘antipsychotics’’ are also prov...

Several lines of evidence have raised the question of whether Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is an independent disease entity or it might be better conceptualized as belonging to the spectrum of mood disorders. This study explores a wide array of lifetime mood features (mood, cognitions, energy, and rhythmicity and vegetative functions) in patients with BP and mood disorders. The sample ...

The diagnosis of Bipolar Spectrum Disorders (BSD) given for office visits has risen 40 fold for children and has risen dramatically for adults as well. Some of the growth may have been fueled by re-categorization of individuals who would previously have received diagnoses of major depression along with the widening of diagnostic criteria for BSD. Concomitant with the rise in BSD diagnoses, the ...

In this article, we review findings on the role of negative cognitive styles and information processing biases as cognitive vulnerabilities to unipolar and bipolar mood disorders. We first briefly describe the cognitive theories of unipolar depression and the logic of their extension to bipolar disorders, as well as methodological issues involved in conducting vulnerability research, particular...