The idea that patients who present with medication-resistant depression could be harbouring a hidden bipolar disorder has been bolstered by the largest study of the topic so far.
Patients who required two or more changes of antidepressant over an eight year period were considerably more likely to receive a revised diagnosis of bipolar disorder than patients with ‘easy to treat’ depression, the Taiwanese researchers reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Using a nationwide database of one million health service users containing over 4,000 people diagnosed with depression, researchers found that 26% of ‘difficult to treat’ depression patients received a bipolar disorder diagnosis, compared with below 10% of those with ‘easy to treat’ depression.
The results added weight to concerns that bipolar...
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