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Background:
Bipolar disorder is a highly recurrent severe psychiatric dis- order. The number of episodes has been found consistently associated with poor outcome.
It has been suggested that bipolar patients with long duration of illness and highly recur- rent course show great impairment of global functioning.
Objectives:
The aim of this study is to assess the clinical course and outcome of patients with bipolar disorder I and II with a high number of mood episodes.
Methods:
We compared a group of bipolar I and II subjects whose number of episode w as higher than ten (N = 167) with a similar-size representative sample of bipolar patients whose number of episodes was lower or equal than ten (N = 131).
Results:
Bipolar patients with more than 10 episodes have a more severe outcome of bipolar disorder. Qualification and occupational status was clearly worse for the highly recurrent group which showed a predominance of depressive polarity.
Conclusions:
These data suggest that bipolar patients with a highly recurrent course have significant functional impairment. With the passing of time, bipolar illness tends to be ruled by depressive features. Treatment strategies may need to address this issue.
