Polypharmacy of Bipolar Disorder (IN: Polypharmacy in Psychiatry, ed. by S N Ghaemi)

The purpose of this chapter is to explain the issues involved, review the data that pertain to them, & provide clinical guidelines for safe & effective polypharmacy in bipolar disorder. The authors recommend aggressive use of mood stabilizers augmented by frequent addition of mood-stabilizing adjuncts & infrequent temporary use of standard antidepressants in cases of severe suicidal depression, or when multiple combinations of mood stabilizers prove insufficiently effective to treat depressive morbidity. (126 refs)