Psychoeducation Manual for Bipolar Disorder

Book excerpt: Although the mainstay of bipolar therapy is drug treatment, psychoeducation is a technique that has proven to be very effective as an add-on to medication, helping to reduce the number of all types of bipolar recurrences and hospitalisation. The object is to improve patients' understanding of the disorder and therefore their adherence to pharmacotherapy. Based on the highly successful, evidence-based Barcelona program, this book is a pragmatic, therapists' guide for how to implement psychoeducation for bipolar patients. It gives practical guidance for how to conduct a psychoeducation group, using sessions and cases drawn from the Barcelona Psychoeducation Program. Moreover, it provides the reader with a great amount of practical tips and tricks and specific techniques to maximize the benefits of bipolar psychoeducation. The authors formed the first group to show the efficacy of psychoeducation as a maintenance treatment and have a long history of performing bipolar psychoeducation.