A 32-year-old pregnant woman with bipolar disorder, well-controlled on valproic acid (Depakote), comes into your office wanting advice on medications. What do you do?

While bipolar disorder is something we all encounter in practice, views are mixed as to how best to diagnose and treat it.

Whether you work in a hospital or an office setting, you’ve probably seen many patients who come to you with a “history of bipolar disorder.” We’ve seen it, too, in multiple settings at an academic medical center. Is this a new epidemic? Or a redefinition of what it means to be “bipolar”?

How should we diagnose bipolar disorder? It isn’t always easy and current bipolar screening tools are problematic for a number of reasons.

Why should we as psychiatrists focus on the psychosocial aspects of bipolar disorder? Dr. Miklowitz explores the benefits of a treatment program that combines targeted psychosocial treatments and medication.

Should we expand our definition of bipolar disorder? Dr. Claudia Baldassano discusses bipolar diagnoses in this Expert Q&A.

Augmentation of antidepressants with antipsychotics has become a common practice, and aripiprazole (Abilify) has been FDA-approved at doses from 2 mg/day to 15 mg/day for this purpose. In a recent report, 225 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) who had failed one to four antidepressant trials were studied to determine whether low dose Abilify really works.

After reading these articles, you should be able to…

Assessing a patient’s risk of suicide is one of the most common, yet challenging, exercises for the psychiatrist.

We’ve all been taught not to prescribe addictive drugs to patients who will abuse them, but in the real world it is not always easy to tell who those patients are or to manage the resulting problems.