The overall aim of this study is to improve our knowledge concerning the most effective treatments bipolar disorder. More specifically, we propose to investigate the efficacy of adding two types of family interventions (Psychoeducational Intervention, Family Therapy) to """"""""Standard Treatment"""""""" composed of pharmacotherapy + clinical management. Additionally, we propose to subdivide families of bipolar patients into """"""""dysfunctional"""""""" and """"""""functional"""""""" groups and to explore the treatment response of these two types of families to the three treatment conditions. 162 bipolar patients will be recruited from new inpatient admissions to a psychiatric hospital. All patients will receive certain common treatments, including hospital milieu, psychopharmacology and clinical management sessions. Patients in the Standard Treatment condition will receive no additional treatment. The patients in the Psychoeducational condition will receive an additional psychoeducational intervention consisting of a videotaped informational presentation and a six session, multifamily psychoeducational group, while the Family Therapy condition will receive 10-15 family therapy sessions. All treatments will begin in the hospital and will continue for a two year period on an outpatient basis. Using this design, we propose to test the following hypotheses. 1. Patients receiving either type of additional family intervention (Psychoeducation or Family Therapy) will respond better than those receiving Standard Treatment. However, due to the hypothesized superiority of Family Therapy for patients with highly dysfunctional families (see Hypothesis 2 below), the Family Therapy intervention should produce a stronger effect than the Psychoeducation. 2. For patients with high levels of family dysfunction, Family Therapy will be more effective than Standard Treatment or Psychoeducation. 3. Patients with low levels of family dysfunction will not differ in their response to Psychoeducational and Family Therapy. Both types of family interventions will be more effective than the Standard Treatment condition for this type of patient.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 19 publications
