Bipolar Disorder Does Not Always Have a Good Outcome

Experience has not confirmed the clinical wisdom that bipolar disorder usually has a good prognosis. These two papers provide disturbing data that further erode confidence that the course of bipolar illness is intermittent or benign. The first paper prospectively compared the outcome of 51 bipolar manic inpatients and 49 unipolar depressed inpatients. After an average of 4.5 years of follow-up, only 41% of both bipolar and unipolar patients had good overall functioning or complete remission, 45% …