ISBD Research Groups
Diagnostic Guidelines Task Force Report
A 30 member international panel led by S. Nassir Ghaemi, MD and formed under the leadership of the ISBD worked for over 3 years to develop consensus recommendationsfor revisions to the DSM-V and ICD 10 bipolar nosology and outlined areas requiring further study. Preliminary data for this report was presented at the 7th ICBD in Pittsburgh, and the final results were presented at the ISBD’s 3rd Biennial Conference held in New Delhi, India in January of 2008.
The task force's charge, originally developed by then ISBD president Samuel Gershon, MD, was to evaluate current diagnostic systems, identify key similarities and differences among them, reconcile the data, provide an organizational schema for diagnosis of bipolar disorder across cultures, and highlight continuing differences for further research.
Since its release, nearly 2000 copies of guidelines have been distributed worldwide. We believe the guidelines will be quite helpful in providing acknowledgement of diagnostic concepts that have been well described and documented in the literature but not formalized in other diagnostic guidelines at this time.
A full write up of the Guidelines document appeared Volume 25: 4 issue of the Psychiatric Times in April of 2008 and the full document, which were published as Part 2 of the February 2008 issues of the Bipolar Disorders Journal, is available through ISBD. Please contact the ISBD office for pricing and details.
ISBD Task Force on the Nomenclature of Course and Outcome in Bipolar Disorders
Under the auspices of the ISBD’s previous president Dr Lakshmi Yatham as task force was set under the leadership of Dr Mauricio Tohen to proposed a standard nomenclature on frequently used terms on the course and outcome of bipolar disorders. The task force included an international panel of experts from, North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Japan, members included Drs Ellen Frank , Charles Bowden, Francesc Colom, Nassir Ghaemi, Lakshmi Yatham, Gin Malhi, Joseph Calabrese, Willem Nolen, Eduard Vieta, Flavio Kapczinski, Guy Goodwin, Trisha Suppes, Gary Sachs, Roy Chengappa, Heinnz Grunze, Philip Mitchell, Shingenobu Kanba, Michael Berk, and Mauricio Tohen.
The group reviewed, interpreted, and proposed operational definitions used to describe the course of bipolar disorders for worldwide use, based on the existing literature, in order to better predict course and treatment outcomes.
Consensus opinion was reached regarding the definition of 9 terms (response, remission, recovery, relapse, recurrence, switch, subsyndromal states, predominant polarity, and functional outcome) commonly used to describe course and outcomes in bipolar disorders.
The task force concluded that determination and dissemination of a consensus nomenclature serves as the first step toward producing a validated and standardized system to define course and outcome in bipolar disorders in order to identify predictors of outcome and effects of treatment. The task force acknowledged that there is limited validity to the proposed terms as for the most part they represent a consensus opinion. These definitions need to be validated in existing data bases and in future studies. Furthermore the primary goal of the task force was to stimulate research on the validity of proposed concepts, and further standardize the technical nomenclature. A report on the task force recommendations will be published in Bipolar Disorders.
Mauricio Tohen MD, DrPH, MBA
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio