Long-term Treatment in Bipolar Disorder

Although the importance of long-term prophylactic treatment is certain in bipolar disorder, there is stil debate on how to which patients and evaluate the treatment response. Efficacious long-term treatment can reduce morbidity and mortality significantly and improve quality of life of bipolar patients. The concept of ideal response should also be defined very clearly in order to discuss the difficulties of measuring the effectiveness of the prophylactic treatment. The aims of this paper are to determine whether our currently methods and criteria are valid, reliable and sensitive evaluating the efficacy of the treatment response and to briefly inform the clinicians about the drugs used in pharmacologic prophylaxis in accordance with relevant data.