Abstract

Psychiatric comorbidity is extremely common. One of the most common and difficult to manage comorbid conditions is the co-occurrence of bipolar disorder (BD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We updated our recent systematic review searching the electronic databases MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycINFO to investigate course of illness in BD-OCD patients. We identified a total of 13 relevant papers which found that the majority of comorbid OCD cases appeared to be related to mood episodes. OC symptoms in comorbid patients appeared more often during depressive episodes, and comorbid BD and OCD cycled together, with OC symptoms often remitting during manic/hypomanic episodes.

Highlights

  • A diagnosis can be considered valid when one can differentiate it from other diagnoses

  • Results from this review support the view that the majority of cases of comorbid bipolar disorder (BD)–obsessive– compulsive disorder (OCD) are, BD cases

  • Considering course of illness as a key diagnostic validator, especially among patients with a primary diagnosis of BD, the majority of comorbid OCD cases appeared to be related to mood episodes

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Summary

Introduction

A diagnosis can be considered valid when one can differentiate it from other diagnoses. Psychiatric comorbidity is extremely common in bipolar disorder (BD). More than half of BD patients have an additional diagnosis, one of the most difficult to manage being obsessive– compulsive disorder (OCD). Recent studies have investigated the co-occurrence of anxiety disorders and BD, the topic is insufficiently studied and the. Relationship between BD and OCD remains unclear (Amerio et al, 2014a; Tonna et al, 2015). What remains unclear is whether this high comorbidity represents the frequent occurrence of two independent diseases, or whether it represents the occurrence of symptoms of one kind (e.g., OCD symptoms) in a different disease (i.e., BD). In agreement with Kraepelin’s thought a psychiatric diagnosis is best established by its longitudinal course of illness, we updated our recent systematic review to investigate the course of illness in BD–OCD patients

Updated systematic review
Results
Limitations
Conclusions
Conflict of interest statement

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