Bipolar disorder (BD) is one of the fastest growing mental health issues. It has already been diagnosed in thousands of people worldwide, but it is though that the number of people who have the condition undiagnosed could be far larger. BD is characterised by extreme mood-swings with sufferers feeling joyous and happy at one time, to depressed and sometimes suicidal at another time.
As with many mental health conditions we are still making progress towards an ideal way to treat the disorder. Whilst progress can sometimes be annoyingly slow, the results from a recent pilot study have brought good news. It seems that dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) has shown a lot of promise for the treatment of the condition.
The whole concept of DBT revolves around the regulation of emotion which makes it the perfect therapy to use against BD. DBT teaches patients to be more aware of their emotions, thoughts and behaviours. This can help sufferers to regain a level of self-control and allows them to manage distressing thoughts and feelings.
The study looked at 26 adults with BD who were randomly assigned to DBT or a wait-list control group. The DBT lasted for 12 sessions of 90 minutes and provided education about BD and the medications to treat it, and also the staple teaching distress tolerance skills, emotion regulation skills, and interpersonal effectiveness skills.
Before the treatment, the majority of the patients had minimal or mild forms of depression: 75 percent of the DBT group and 93 of the control group. The percentage of patients who showed minimal or mild depressive symptoms receiving DBT increased to 92 percent, whereas it had decreased to 42 percent among the control group.
This shows that only is DBT an effective treatment to manage the problems of the condition, but that also if untreated it can get much worse very quickly.
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