Patients with bipolar disorder who participated in a collaborative care intervention demonstrated more improvement in functioning and quality of life than controls who received care as usual, Dr. Trijntje Y.G. van der Voort and coauthors at the VU University Medical Center department of psychiatry in Amsterdam report.
In an analysis of 138 adult patients with bipolar disorder over 12 months, those randomized to collaborative care showed more improvement in functioning than did patients in the control group, with a small effect size (ES = 0.3; z = -2.5, P = .01). Additionally, patients in the collaborative care group improved more in the physical health domain of quality of life (ES = 0.4; z = 2.5; P = .01), the authors reported.
The findings suggest that collaborative care is “a promising intervention” that could help patients with bipolar disorder improve functioning, physical health, and quality of life, Dr. van der Voort and colleagues said in the report.
Read the full article published in the Journal of Affective Disorders here: doi:10.1016/j.jad.2015.03.005 .
