All severe medical illnesses may improve their outcome by including in their regular treatment some aspects concerning healthy habits, behavioural changes that may benefit the course of the illness, symptoms management and adherence issues. Bipolar disorders are not an exception. Moreover, evidence coming from randomized clinical trials shows an impressive efficacy of some education-based psychological interventions, as an add-on to pharmacotherapy, on relapse prevention both at the short and long-term. All these techniques cover key issues such as insight, early warning signs detection, habits regularity and treatment adherence to empower the patient and enhance a better outcome.
However, despite the enthusiasm that all these techniques have raised, psychological interventions for BD have obviously some limits and a group of non-responding patients has begun to be identified. Clinical, demographic, neuropsychological and psychobiological factors may play a role on the poor response to psychological interventions in BD. All these factors will be discussed during the session