World Bipolar Day

 “World Bipolar Day” is celebrated on March 30th every year. The WHO’s Global Burden of Disease Study ranks Bipolar Disorder as the sixth cause of years lost to disability. The vision of World Bipolar Day is to bring awareness to bipolar disorders and eliminate social stigma around the world. Through international collaboration the goal of World Bipolar Day is to bring the world population information about bipolar disorders that will educate and improve sensitivity towards the illness. Bipolar Disorder is a chronic and recurrent illness, which represents a major public health problem, and can lead to incomplete functional recovery, social/family disruptions, and cognitive impairment, in addition to increased mortality .The Asian Network of Bipolar Disorder, the International Bipolar Foundation, the International Society for Bipolar Disorder, came together to work on the concept of a world bipolar day.

Consider the statistics:

·   According to the World Health Organization (WHO), access to health care and social services capable of providing treatment and social support for mental illnesses is key.

According to WHO, mental disorders affect 1 in 4 people.

·    About 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6 percent of the population, age 18 and older in any given year, have bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder affects 60 million people worldwide.

 Developmental Model:

Duffy et al 2010 showed that individuals at familial risk for Bipolar Disorder develop the illness in a forward sequence of clinical stages: evolving from non-mood disorders followed by minor mood disorders, then major mood disorders, and finally Bipolar Disorders.

Treatment and Response:

• The response to lithium is inversely correlated to the number of episodes and duration of illness prior to starting treatment.
• Consistently, olanzapine was found to be more effective early in the course of Bipolar Disorder
• The same findings were replicated in the field of psycho social treatments where pts with multiple recurrences do not seem to respond to adjunctive cognitive behavioural therapy or to family psycho education.

Bipolar Disorder is marked by multiple episodes - associated with consequent employment and financial difficulties, a deleterious impact on relationships, and the development of self-esteem issues, guilt and loss, which serves as a secondary stressor, perpetuating illness.

It is plausible that mood episodes function as allostatic states - generating a load that accumulates to compromise regulatory systems and ultimately bearing responsibility for the progression of the illness. Deployment of appropriate biological and psychosocial interventions in the early phases of Bipolar Disorder -as they could prevent the secondary consequences of the illness, including neuro progression and secondary morbidity.

Staging suggests that interventions may have differential utility at different phases of the disorder, and that treatments should be tailored, amongst other factors, to the phase of the disorder.

This paradigm is inherently optimistic.

On the occasion of World Bipolar Day we take the privilege to invite all the psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical psychologists, mental health doctors, psychiatric nurses, researchers, cognitive behavioral therapists, rehabilitation, and many others who have contributed a lot to the field of psychiatry and mental health to the International Conference on Bipolar Disorder: Psychiatry and Mental Health being held on November 8-10, 2018 at Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Visit us: https://bipolar.neuroconferences.com/

This is a time to call for keynote speakers, speakers, abstracts. Join us and register yourself on this World Bipolar Day to avail special sponsorship benefits.