Family Environment, Cognitive Functioning, and Quality of Life Among Depressed Adolescents with Bipolar Disorder
At the 2012 meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Arman Danielyan presented a poster on psychosocial, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics of youth in a depressive phase of bipolar disorder. These adolescents had lower scores on a variety of measures.
Adolescents with bipolar depression had significantly lower scores on 7 of 10 family environment scales measuring the quality of family interaction, communication, and emotional tone. They also exhibited significant impairment in cognitive function, particularly executive functioning, and all domains of psychosocial health were substantially lower than US normative data.
The authors concluded that bipolar depression affects multiple domains of adolescents’ lives including their cognitive, psychosocial, and family functioning. This suggests that the involvement of the whole family in the treatment process would be beneficial.
The impaired cognitive functioning these young people face is associated with lower quality of life, and ways of addressing this better are clearly needed.
Editor’s Note: In a previous BNN we reported on the efficacy of Family Focused Therapy (FFT), which was pioneered by David Miklowitz. This therapy is effective for adolescents and adults with bipolar disorder and for adolescents who are at high risk for the disorder because of two factors: having a parent with the disorder and having preliminary symptoms of bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (BP-NOS), depression, or an anxiety disorder. Kiki Chang, a respected authority on child and adolescent psychiatry, recommends FFT for children and adolescents with bipolar disorder and those at high risk for it.
