With bipolar, talk therapy helps if it keeps you on drugs, as I said. Manic depressives are always going off their meds. I don't knwo the study you name. But I know the literature on this pretty well, and the verdict is: with bipolar disorder, drugs are mandatory, talk is optional and may help a bit if it keeps you on your drugs. That's pretty much it. This is important, because if you're bipolar and don't take drugs, you stand a 25% chance of killing yourself. That's the suicide rate for untreated bipolar disorder. Talk therapy won't hurt, but you have to take your fuckin' meds.
--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > Depends on with what. Manic depression or bipolar
> > disorder is totally impervious to talk therapy.
> The
> > only thing talk therapy can do with bipolar
> patients
> > is to help keep them on their meds. Whatever the
> deep
> > cause of bipolar disorder, once you got it, drugs
> are
> > the only thing that work. See, e,g., Goodwin &
> > Jamison, Manic Depressive Illness, Oxford 199?,
> older
> > but still authoritative, a fat treatise.
>
> Must be old data. There are a number of studies
> over the
> past 10 years that have demonstrated that drug
> therapy
> combined with cognitive behavioral therapy is a more
> effective treatment for bipolar disorder than drug
> therapy alone (e.g., Perry, Tarrier, Morriss,
> McCarthy,
> & Limb, 1999). Sure, drug therapy is helpful, but
> the "talk" therapy is more useful than you suggest.
>
> Miles
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