Correlates of psychiatric co-morbidity in a sample of Egyptian patients with bipolar disorder

Abstract Background and objectives Bipolar disorder (BD) is a complex, chronic mood disorder involving repeated episodes of depression and mania/hypomania. Two thirds of patients with bipolar disorder have a comorbid psychiatric condition. This study aims to assess the prevalence of Axis I diagnosis with its socio-demographic and clinical correlates among a sample of Egyptian patients with bipolar disorder. Methods Out of the 400 patients who were enrolled in the study from number of governmental and private psychiatric hospitals in Cairo, Egypt, 350 patients diagnosed with bipolar affective disorders (157 females and 193 males) with age ranging from 18 to 55 years were selected. Patients were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorder (Research Version) (SCID-I). Results Prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity among BD patients was 20.3% (71 patients) among which 63 patients (18%) had comorbid substance abuse and 8 patients (2.3%) had comorbid anxiety disorders. Limitations The study was limited by its cross sectional design with some patients having florid symptoms during assessment, not having a well representative community sample. This might have decreased the reliability and prevalence of lifetime psychiatric comorbidity due to uncooperativeness or memory bias. The study group was composed of bipolar patients attending tertiary care service which limits the possibility of generalizing these results on different treatment settings. Conclusions Substance abuse followed by anxiety disorders was found to be the most common psychiatric comorbidity. Family history of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse as well as current psychotic features were highly correlated with comorbidity.