Links between participant demographic and clinical characteristics and patterns of usage in research trials of self-management psychoeducation interventions for bipolar disorder.

Baker, Russell and Jones, Steven and Perez Algorta, Guillermo (2022) Links between participant demographic and clinical characteristics and patterns of usage in research trials of self-management psychoeducation interventions for bipolar disorder. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a complex mood disorder that is often treated pharmacologically to reduce patient symptoms and the risk of relapse. Medication though is only partially effective, with most individuals continuing to experience on-going symptoms. This has resulted in interest in the benefits of psychological approaches delivered as adjuncts to pharmacotherapies. Psychoeducation (PE) is an example of a psychological approach which has been demonstrated to be effective in BD, reducing the number of patient relapses, with positive outcomes being linked to increased levels of intervention usage. However, individuals with BD have been demonstrated to have high rates of intervention non-usage. This study investigated participant demographic and clinical characteristics, to discover if they correlated with usage levels in PE interventions for BD when delivered by digital or face-toface modalities. A quantitative systematic literature review of 39 studies examined the clinical and demographic characteristics of participants in adjunctive PE interventions for BD. This was to determine if these characteristics differed between users of individual, group and online delivery modalities. An empirical study, consisting of a secondary analysis of 3 studies, delivered by two online and one group modality was also conducted. Measures of demographic and clinical characteristics were extracted and used to examine predictors of PE intervention usage for BD via the number of sessions attended. The literature review showed that numbers of female participants in PE interventions were significantly higher than males across all delivery modalities. In the online studies, higher levels of regular commitments due to work, family and other responsibilities, were significantly associated with greater intervention usage. In the empirical study, increased usage of group PE was linked to increasing age and higher levels of education. No significant correlations were observed in the online studies.