Dr. Goldberg, I know you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and treating bipolar disorder over the years, beginning when you were a researcher at NIMH, then on the faculty of Columbia University, and most recently in your private practice and your managing of Depression Central. I was hoping we could begin by discussing some of the tricky aspects of diagnosing bipolar disorder.

There have been many misguided treatments for bipolar disorder and other major mental illnesses throughout the history of psychiatry, but perhaps none has been as misguided--and as damaging--as the one practiced by Henry Aloysius Cotton, M.D.

We knew it was about to happen. We just didn’t know it would happen all at once. Between July and September of 2004, Seroquel, Geodon, and Abilify sequentially won approval for the treatment of manic episodes in bipolar disorder.

Suddenly, we all have a colleague who is prescribing Trileptal (oxcarbazepine) for bipolar disorder, and who is claiming to have fabulous success.

Dr. Baldassano, as the Director of the Bipolar Outpatient Clinic of U Penn, how many patients with bipolar disorder do you typically evaluate in a given week?

Suddenly, it seems that everybody and their cousin is asking us if they have bipolar disorder. A few years ago, bipolar disorder was the ignored orphan diagnosis in psychiatry. However, now that various patented molecules have been proven effective, industry money is flying into efforts to publicize the diagnosis, and it's clearly working.