Treating Bipolar Disorder Without Meds?

File this one under interesting. According to the Guardian, Nick Craddock, a professor at Cardiff University (where David Healy also teaches), says that many patients with bipolar disorder could benefit from medication-free treatment. Instead, treatments would focus on treating triggers of various symptoms--for example, insomnia--rather than bombing the entire brain with meds for a long period of time:

"Traditional drug regimes for people with bipolar disorder could be increasingly replaced with therapies to treat the "triggers" of manic episodes, scientists say.

In the future, making "lifestyle changes", as well as learning new ways to cope with stress and having more therapy, could help some people avoid a lifetime of medication, according to Nick Craddock, a psychiatrist at Cardiff University."

Sounds like something I may have said before. It's an interesting idea intellectually, but the real world mechanics of it might be tough to pull off. It is possible though. At a minimum, it would require highly self-aware patients who are willing to get on top of symptoms before they spiral into full-syndrome episodes. That's a worthy goal, however, because as Cradock notes:

"'The problem at the moment is that diagnosis often means a prescription. There isn't enough tailoring of treatments'....Craddock, who is scientific adviser to the bipolar research charity MDF, stressed the research was not yet conclusive enough for people to risk coming off their medication, nor was there enough support available from mental health services to enable the monitoring needed to prevent someone going off the rails."

Glad to see someone out there is starting to think creatively and publicly about all of this, because we sure have a mess on our hands in treating bipolar disorder via the meds-only paradigm. But you knew that already.