Understanding Bipolar Disorder in Late Life Clinical and Treatment Correlates of a Sample of Elderly Outpatients

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine the demographic, clinical,and treatment correlates of bipolar disorder (BD) in outpatients 65 years orolder and to compare patients with BD subtype I (BD-I) versus BD subtype II(BD-II) and patients with early onset (EO; e50 years old) versus late onset(LO; 950 years old) of the illness. Sixty-nine consecutive outpatients with BDwere included. Diagnosis was delayed for a mean of 14.1 years, significantlylonger in patients with EO (18.6 years) than with LO (3.3 years). Mild tomoderate depressive symptoms were detected in 29% of the patients. Thepatients were receiving a mean of 3 different psychotropic medications.Antidepressants were more frequently prescribed to patients with BD-II thanto patients with BD-I (75.80% vs. 48.60%) and to patients with EO (71.7%)than to LO (35.3%). Geriatric BD has similar clinical characteristics withthose of younger ages, and these do not seem to greatly differ with subtype orage of onset.Key Words: Bipolar disorder, old age, age of onset, late-onset bipolardisorder(J Nerv Ment Dis 2013;201: 674Y679)