Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
Researchers reviewed records from 1,130 people with bipolar disorder seen at a mood-disorders center. They found that depressive episodes lasted much longer than manic episodes, and that episode length was similar across bipolar subtypes (BD-I, BD-II, mixed, or with psychosis). The authors say this pattern — more and longer depressions…
This 2017 clinical review explains how bipolar I and II disorders are diagnosed and treated. It says bipolar illness involves swings between manic (or hypomanic) and depressive episodes. Treatment usually needs both medicines and psychosocial therapy, and care must be adjusted over time because relapses and incomplete responses — especially…
This small, single-centre study of 50 caregivers found that the amount of burden felt by caregivers of people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) was about the same as for caregivers of people with schizophrenia. Caregivers who had a high burden were more likely to report anxiety, depression, and worse quality…
This study used nationwide Danish health records to compare 979 people with bipolar depression who had just been discharged from a psychiatric ward. Of these, 358 received antidepressants and 621 did not. The researchers followed everyone for 1 year and, after adjusting for baseline factors, found no statistically significant increase…
Researchers combined baseline data from 548 people in four clinical trials who all had current major depression. They used a network analysis, a method that maps how symptoms link to each other, to see which borderline personality disorder (BPD) and depression symptoms connect. After accounting for how severe the depression…
