Psychological interventions are increasingly being recognised as playing an important role in the treatment of bipolar disorder. While several excellent manuals describing cognitive behavioural interventions have been published, these interventions are not tailored specifically to the needs of young people who are in the early stages of illness and tend to be difficult to engage, have poor medication adherence, and poor insight. We developed a manualised CBT treatment for youth with bipolar disorder to fill this gap and found improved functional recovery and greater reduction in depressive symptoms in young people who engaged in the intervention than those who did not engage in the therapy. Full engagement in the therapy was defined as completion of at least five of the 8 intervention modules. The intervention was available to all patients who were receiving case management and were enrolled in a RCT comparing two antipsychotic medications (olanzapine or chlorpromazine) combined with lithium for treatment of first episode mania at the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre in Melbourne, Australia. We sought to identify factors associated with young people engaging or not engaging in the psychological intervention. A series of logistic regression analyses were performed with a range of demographic variables and measures of symptoms and functioning entered as predictors. Results and clinical implications will be presented.