Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a complex mood disorder that is often treated
pharmacologically to reduce patient symptoms and the risk of relapse.
Medication though is only partially effective, with most individuals continuing to
experience on-going symptoms. This has resulted in interest in the benefits of
psychological approaches delivered as adjuncts to pharmacotherapies.
Psychoeducation (PE) is an example of a psychological approach which has
been demonstrated to be effective in BD, reducing the number of patient
relapses, with positive outcomes being linked to increased levels of
intervention usage. However, individuals with BD have been demonstrated to
have high rates of intervention non-usage. This study investigated participant
demographic and clinical characteristics, to discover if they correlated with
usage levels in PE interventions for BD when delivered by digital or face-toface
modalities.
A quantitative systematic literature review of 39 studies examined the clinical
and demographic characteristics of participants in adjunctive PE interventions
for BD. This was to determine if these characteristics differed between users
of individual, group and online delivery modalities. An empirical study,
consisting of a secondary analysis of 3 studies, delivered by two online and
one group modality was also conducted. Measures of demographic and
clinical characteristics were extracted and used to examine predictors of PE
intervention usage for BD via the number of sessions attended.
The literature review showed that numbers of female participants in PE
interventions were significantly higher than males across all delivery
modalities. In the online studies, higher levels of regular commitments due to
work, family and other responsibilities, were significantly associated with
greater intervention usage. In the empirical study, increased usage of group
PE was linked to increasing age and higher levels of education. No significant
correlations were observed in the online studies.