The Relationship Between the Duration of Drug Use and the Bipolar Disorder Patients' Sociodemographic and Clinical Characteristics

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the duration of psychotropic drug use in the long-term follow-up of bipolar disorder (BD) patients. In addition, this study aimed to investigate their role in the daily clinical practice in association with patient sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. The overarching goal for this study was to produce results that enlighten the development of new treatment strategies. Method: Follow-up data acquired from the Psychiatry Department of Uludag University Faculty of Medicine was used to retrospectively evaluate 151 patients diagnosed with BD. Socio-demographic data of the patients and information regarding the disease and the drugs used were analyzed. Results: Of the patients studied, 57.0% were female with a mean age of 41.5 +/- 12.8. The mean duration of follow-up was 1985.3 +/- 1933 [median 1291 (15-9135)] days; euthymic period accounted for 86.0% of this duration. Interestingly, incompliance with the treatment triggered the switch to mania and ineffective treatment triggered the switch to depression. Medication distribution was as follows: 95.4% of the patients received antipsychotic and mood stabilizer treatments, 3.3% received only mood stabilizer treatment, and 1.30% received only antipsychotic treatment. The major findings of this study was that many sociodemographic as well as clinical manifestations including, early onset (aged <= 18 years), unmarried, first episode of mania, those with disease not showing seasonal features, psychotic symptoms, history of hospitalization, and higher number of manic or hypomanic episodes resulted in increased patient prescribed antipsychotic drugs Conclusion: Our data suggests that antipsychotic drugs are being used more frequently and for longer durations in the treatment of BD.