Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy in Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a severe and chronic psychiatric disorder including transitions between mania, hypomania, and depression, that negatively affects psychosocial functioning and requires regular monitoring. Pharmacotherapy is an essential part of the treatment for bipolar disorder. However, receiving psychotherapy and medication simultaneously would provide a better prognosis for people with bipolar disorder. Although cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is commonly utilized as a psychotherapy approach for bipolar disorder, empirical findings do not always support the effectiveness of CBT on bipolar disorder. Therefore, the need for different psychotherapy approaches that can be applied to bipolar disorder has arisen. Recently, the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on bipolar disorder has begun to be investigated. In the present review, studies investigating the effects of MBCT on bipolar disorder were gathered. Because, it is aimed to contribute to the literature by investigating whether the MBCT, which was examined for many disorders recent years, is also effective or not in bipolor disorder. Therefore, studies reached via databases such as Web of Science, PubMed, SAGE Journals and Science Direct were examined in terms of sample characteristics, methodological backgrounds, and results. In the reviewed studies, it has been found that MBCT provides a reduction in anxiety, depression or mania/hypomania symptoms and an increase in mindfulness levels of people with bipolar disorder. Moreover, participants were tended to indicate that they benefited from MBCT. It was also observed increase in the participants’ attention, information processing, memory, emotion regulation, and positive affect. However, it was seen that these findings were not supported in all studies. Because these studies were mostly conducted with people who were in remission period, whether MBCT leads reduction in manic and hypomanic symptoms was not totally clear