Key words: bipolar disorder-unipolar depression – diagnosis – treatment – guidelines-suicidality Increasing understanding of the bipolar spectrum of disorders has led to an increasing integration of concepts regarding the aetiology and treatment of affective disorders. Thus, for example, we now understand that an illness, previously believed to be recurrent depressive disorder, may develop over...

Two lines of evidence point to the relationship between bipolar mood disorder and treatment-resistant depression. First, the frequency of suboptimal response to antidepressant drugs is significantly higher in bipolar than in unipolar mood disorder. Secondly, the first and the second generation mood stabilizing drugs are efficacious for augmentation of antidepressants in treatmentresistant depre...

Both traditional and newer antiepileptic drugs have been considered for the acute and maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder. Although the psychotropic actions of these compounds have long been recognized, their specific mood-stabilizing properties have become evident only relatively recently. Carbamazepine and valproate are the antiepileptics most thoroughly studied for the treatment of bip...

OBJECTIVE Some patients with bipolar disorder experience mood episodes following emotional life events, whereas others do not. There is evidence that orbitofrontal hypoactivity may be related to this, because the orbitofrontal cortex is involved in the regulation of emotional and behavioural responses to external events. The close anatomical and functional connection between the orbitofrontal c...

Distinguishing between major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder is important because there are differences in the optimal management of these conditions. Antidepressant treatment of bipolar depression (BPD) can adversely affect long-term prognosis by causing destabilization of mood and more frequent depressive episodes, and can lead to the development of treatment resistance. Most p...

BACKGROUND The Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) has been translated to many languages and has been used in many countries as a screening instrument for bipolar disorder. The main objective of this study was to evaluate validity of the Thai version of the MDQ as a screening instrument for bipolar disorder in a psychiatric outpatient sample, and to determine its optimum question #1 item threshol...

CONTEXT The phenomenology of bipolar I disorder affects treatment and prognosis. OBJECTIVE To describe the duration of bipolar I mood episodes and factors associated with recovery from these episodes. DESIGN Subjects with Research Diagnostic Criteria bipolar I disorder were prospectively followed up for as long as 25 years. The probability of recovery over time from multiple successive mood...

The postnatal maturation of the human prefrontal cortex is associated with substantial increase of number of oligodendrocytes. Previously, we reported decreased numerical density of oligodendrocytes in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia and mood disorders. To gain further understanding of the role oligodendrocytes in pathogenesis of schizophrenia and mood disorders, we examined the effect o...