Effects of an Integrative Psychological Program in Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is related to a high level of personal, familial, social and economic burden. There is a need for feasible adjunctive psychological interventions to use in clinical practice as a complement of pharmacotherapy to enhance aspects that medication cannot reach. This project aims at develop and evaluate the impact of an adjunctive brief integrative program for bipolar patients (euthymic or with subthreshold symptoms). The patients (N=124) will be randomly assigned to two different groups. The experimental group (62 patients) will take part on a group integrative program consisting of 12-sessions of 90 minutes (based on psychoeducation, mindfulness and functional remediation) whilst the control group (62 patients) will not receive any sort of add-on psychotherapy. All patients will mantain standard psychiatric treatment. Together with the baseline assessment, the whole sample will be assessed after the intervention and at 12 months from the baseline evaluation, regarding sociodemographic, clinical and neuropsychological variables. If the intervention is effective it will improve psychosocial functioning (main variable), wellbeing and quality of life, as well as improve clinical outcomes and neurocognitive functioning of those affected by the illness.