MedWire (3/14, Cowen) reports, “Around one-third of patients with bipolar disorder stop taking their medications against doctors’ advice within 1 year of starting treatment,” according to a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Researchers “studied 275 patients (65.1% women), aged an average of 39 years, with bipolar I or II disorder who received maintenance treatment” and “found that dropout rates at 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after starting treatment were 10.9%, 20.4%, 24.7%, 33.8%, 44.0%, and 50.2%, respectively, with rates increasing rapidly over the first 3 months. … The most common reasons for dropout were “denial of therapeutic need” (34.8%), “lack of treatment efficacy” (23.2%), and “adverse drug events” (13.0%).”
Related Links:
— “Treatment dropout rates high in bipolar disorder patients,”Mark Cowen, MedWire News, March 14, 2012.