Psychological interventions in bipolar disorders

The possible role of psychological interventions in the treatment of bipolar disorders has followed a course comparable with that of type I bipolar disorders itself, with psychotic symptoms in both the phases. After an initial phase of grandiose psychoanalytic euphoria, in which it was assumed that psychotherapy would play a fundamental role in the treatment of bipolar disorders and that words – or in some cases the absence of words – would “cure” this disorder, neurobiological and pharmacological findings appeared to usher in a serious melancholic phase for psychotherapy in the mid-1970s and 1980s; this age was open not only to pesimism, but to speculation, and just a few open studies with small samples were published. Optimism for psychotherapy in bipolar disorders returned in the 1990s due to two factors: