Bipolar Disorder News and Research

Latest Bipolar Disorder News and Research

Gene malfunctions cause schizophrenia, depression symptoms in mice

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that malfunction of a gene that had been associated with schizophrenia and depression does indeed cause symptoms of those disorders.

4 May 2007

Childhood-onset bipolar disorder is more common than believed

In bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive disorder, a person experiences mood changes that fluctuate between periods of abnormally high energy and extreme depression.

2 May 2007

New human medications found in fish in Texas

Baylor University researchers have found the residue of three new human medications in fish living in the Pecan Creek in North Texas.

2 May 2007

Difficult to distinguish bipolar symptoms in children

At least one-third of the time, the symptoms of bipolar disorder first appear in childhood or adolescence.

26 Apr 2007

Psychotherapeutic drug spending surges

Spending on prescription drugs to treat depression, anxiety, pain, schizophrenia and other conditions climbed from $7.9 billion in 1997 to $20 billion in 2004 - over a 150 percent increase, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

25 Apr 2007

Symposium on depression and bipolar disorder

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will hold its 21st annual Mood Disorders Symposium titled Bipolar Revisited: Where We've Been, Where We're Going, at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, April 24, to draw attention to new findings in basic and clinical research on depression and bipolar disorder.

24 Apr 2007

New understanding of schizophrenia

New research helps bridge an important gap in understanding schizophrenia, providing the best evidence to date that defects in the brain's white matter are a key contributor to the disease, which affects about 1 percent of people worldwide.

24 Apr 2007

Discovery of molecular mechanism that alters strength of higher brain network connections

Yale School of Medicine and University of Crete School of Medicine researchers report in Cell April 20 the first evidence of a molecular mechanism that dynamically alters the strength of higher brain network connections.

21 Apr 2007

Lithium increases gray matter in bipolar brains

Neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that lithium, long the standard treatment for bipolar disorder, increases the amount of gray matter in the brains of patients with the illness.

11 Apr 2007

Eslicarbazepine shows promise for treating epileptic seizures

A new study appearing in the latest issue of Epilepsia shows that a new drug called Eslicarbazepine (ESL) shows promise as a treatment for epilepsy patients whose symptoms remain uncontrolled with existing medications.

7 Apr 2007

Effectiveness of psychosocial treatments for bipolar disorder

This is a follow up study to one released last Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine on the effects of antidepressants in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Both studies, called STEP-BD, were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

4 Apr 2007

Intensive psychotherapy most effective for treating bipolar depression

Patients taking medications to treat bipolar disorder are more likely to get well faster and stay well if they receive intensive psychotherapy, according to results from the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

4 Apr 2007

Intensive therapy helps in battle against bipolar disorder

New results from the largest federally funded bipolar study ever conducted show that patients who receive psychotherapy in addition to medication get better faster from bipolar disorder's debilitating depression and stay better longer, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher involved in the study.

4 Apr 2007

Treatment options for bipolar disorder

For depressed people with bipolar disorder who are taking a mood stabilizer, adding an antidepressant medication is no more effective than a placebo (sugar pill), according to results published online on March 28, 2007 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

1 Apr 2007

Circadian genes may be involved in bipolar disorder

Disrupt the gene that regulates the biological clocks in mice and they become manic, exhibiting behaviors similar to humans with bipolar disorder, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

25 Mar 2007

Genetic tendency toward suicide linked to genome on chromosome 2

A Johns Hopkins-led study has found evidence that a genetic tendency toward suicide has been linked to a particular area of the genome on chromosome 2 that has been implicated in two additional recent studies of attempted suicide.

20 Feb 2007

Severely mentally ill have increased risk of death from coronary heart disease and stroke

A large British study indicates that individuals with severe mental illnesses are significantly more likely to die from coronary heart disease and stroke, but not cancer, than those without mental illnesses, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

6 Feb 2007

Childhood abuse could significantly increase the risk of psychosis in later life

Using data from a large American epidemiological mental health survey, based on a nationally representative sample of over 5000 people, Dr Mark Shevlin and Dr Gary Adamson found that social and environmental factors, such as childhood abuse, could significantly increase the risk of psychosis in later life.

23 Jan 2007

Experts say "schizophrenia label" a harmful concept which should be dropped

British mental health experts say the term schizophrenia should abandoned as it has little scientific validity, and is imprecise and stigmatizing.

From The University of Manchester 10 Oct 2006

Hospital services most expensive part of U.S. health aystem

About 33% of every dollar spent on U.S. health care goes toward inpatient hospital care, according to a report by HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Washington Times reports (Howard Price, Washington Times, 9/23).

26 Sep 2006