Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Jan 4, 2019; 9(1): 7-29
Published online Jan 4, 2019. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v9.i1.7
Comorbidity of bipolar and anxiety disorders: An overview of trends in research
Mamidipalli Sai Spoorthy, Subho Chakrabarti, Sandeep Grover
Mamidipalli Sai Spoorthy, Subho Chakrabarti, Sandeep Grover, Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh 160012, India
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with conception and design of the literature review and analysis, drafting, critical revision and editing, and final approval of the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Subho Chakrabarti, MD, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh 160012, India. subhochd@yahoo.com
Telephone: +91-172-2756808 Fax: +91-172-2744401
Received: September 30, 2018
Peer-review started: September 30, 2018
First decision: October 17, 2018
Revised: November 4, 2018
Accepted: December 5, 2018
Article in press: December 5, 2018
Published online: January 4, 2019
Processing time: 89 Days and 7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: This review of existing research shows that about half of those with bipolar disorder (BD) are likely to develop anxiety disorders in their lifetimes and a third of them will manifest these disorders at any point of time. Anxiety disorder comorbidity negatively impacts almost all aspects of the presentation and course of BD and makes for a much poorer treatment-response and outcome. Though research data on aetiology and management of such comorbidity is limited, clinicians need to screen patients with BD for anxiety disorders and provide comprehensive and on-going treatment to prevent the deleterious consequences of anxiety disorder comorbidity in BD.