Coming as a surprise to more than a few mental health professionals, a new study out today suggests that bipolar disorder is often missed in patients who present only with major depression. The study examined 5,635 adults seen at community and hospital psychiatry departments in a number of different countries.
The discrepancy was reported because of the use of “bipolarity specifier criteria” that are broader than the DSM-IV criteria, the standard for diagnosis of mental disorders by mental health professionals.
Using the broader bipolar criteria developed by the researchers found an additional 31 percent of patients who could have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
So what’s really going on here? Are professionals really “missing” bipolar disorder? Or have the researchers stacked the deck in this study simply to suggest it is so?
