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 or older and to compare patients with BD subtype I (BD-I) versus BD subtype II (BD-II) and patients with early onset (EO; <=50 years old) versus late onset (LO; >50 years old) of the illness. Sixty-nine consecutive outpatients with BD were included. Diagnosis was delayed for a mean of 14.1 years, significantly longer in patients with EO (18.6 years) than with LO (3.3 years). Mild to moderate depressive symptoms were detected in 29% of the patients. The patients were receiving a mean of 3 different psychotropic medications. Antidepressantswere more frequently prescribed to patients with BD-II than to 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 with those of younger ages, and these do not seem to greatly differ with subtype or age of onset.