Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Aug 26, 2017; 5(4): 103-123
Published online Aug 26, 2017. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v5.i4.103
Medication non-adherence in bipolar disorder: Review of rates, demographic and clinical predictors
Subho Chakrabarti
Subho Chakrabarti, Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh 160012, India
Author contributions: Chakrabarti S solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
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/
Correspondence to: Subho Chakrabarti, MD, FAMS, FRCPsych, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Sector 12, Chandigarh 160012, India. subho@pgimer.edu.in
Telephone: +91-172-2756808 Fax: +91-172-2744401
Received: February 28, 2017
Peer-review started: March 2, 2017
First decision: April 18, 2017
Revised: May 31, 2017
Accepted: June 12, 2017
Article in press: June 13, 2017
Published online: August 26, 2017
Processing time: 176 Days and 2.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Based on existing reviews non-adherence is estimated to be present in 25%-42% of patients with bipolar disorder (BD). The present, more comprehensive review comprising of 198 studies found mean rates of 41.5%-43% and median rates of 40%-41% for medication non-adherence in BD. Neither demographic characteristics nor medication-related variables were unequivocally linked to medication non-adherence in BD, while comorbid substance use disorder and absence of insight were the only two clinical factors consistently associated with non-adherence in BD. The failure of clinical and demographic factors to predict non-adherence emphasizes the importance of other patient orientated factors in determining non-adherence in BD.