Short-Term Family-Focused Psycho- Educational Program for Bipolar Mood Disorder in Mashhad

Background: bipolar mood disorder type 1 is one of the mostserious psychiatric disorders. we aimed to assess the efficacyof a short-term family.focused treatment for patients with bipolarmood disorder type 1 in a one-year follow-up period.methods: sixty patients with bipolar mood disorder and acutemania episodes who referred to ibn-e-sina psychiatric hospitalin mashhad were recruited. half of them were randomly assignedto the psycho-education group. their available adultfamily members received a psycho-educational training sessionbefore the patients' discharge from the hospital. all patients receivedconcurrent appropriate pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy.all the patients were evaluated by a blind home-visit teamevery 3 months for a period of one year. the evaluation includedthe number of psychiatric visits, patients' adherence, relapsestatus, number of re-hospitalizations, and time to relapse.results: fifty-seven patients completed the trial. in the experimentalgroup, there were four patients with relapse(13.79%) and in the control group nine patients (31.58%) hadrelapse of the disorder (p=0.006). the mean time of takingmedications in the education group was 11.41 months. thistime was 9.14 months in the control group (p<0.001). therewas also a significant difference between the two groups interms of frequency of psychiatric visits (p<0.001).conclusion: short.term family-focused psycho-education isan effective adjunct to pharmacotherapy for bipolar mood disorder.further studies are needed to evaluate the efficacy andcost-effectiveness of long-term family-focused psychoeducationaltreatment for patients with bipolar mood disorder.iran j med sci 2009; 34(2): 104-109.