Bipolar Disorder Daily News Blog

New UK Guidelines for Diagnosis and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder set by NICE

New guidelines in UK (England) set to raise awareness and improve identification, diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder in children and adults.

"The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health have today (26 July) launched a clinical guideline on the identification, treatment and management of bipolar disorder in children and adults.

Bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression) is a serious mental health condition characterized by the presence of episodes of mania and depression. During a manic episode, the person usually has feelings of elation, irritability, or both. They may also feel over-confident and be driven to take unnecessary risks. When a person has depression they feel low and lose pleasure in things they used to enjoy and may also have other symptoms such as feeling tired all the time, sleep problems, poor concentration, feelings of worthlessness and/or guilt and thoughts of suicide or harming oneself.

The guideline calls for more to be done to ensure that bipolar disorder is correctly identified and recognized by health professionals and sets out the criteria for when patients need to be referred on for specialist psychiatric assessment and treatment. It also sets out the drug treatment options for people with bipolar disorder and emphasizes the need to involve service users in treatment decisions. Other recommendations cover the need for annual physical health checks for people with bipolar disorder and the need for all healthcare professionals to monitor carefully the medication taken by patients."

At a glance info on the new guidelines

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