The Effectiveness of Psychoeducation on Reducing the Significance of Mania Symptoms and Increasing the Insights among the Patients with Bipolar I Disorder in Mania Phase

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of psychoeducation on increasing insight and reducing mania symptoms in patients with bipolar I disorder in mania phase.
This was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design and control group. The statistical population included patients with bipolar I disorder in Shafa hospital in Rasht City, Iran, from April 2016 to September 2017. First, the subjects were screened using inclusion and exclusion criteria; then, 24 patients were selected based on convenience sampling and randomly assigned to equal intervention and control groups. In addition to medication, the intervention group received psychoeducation for 8 sessions per week, and the control group received only medication. The present study was a semi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and control group. Mania and introspection symptoms were assessed before and after intervention using Young's Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) and Scale to Assess Unawareness in Mental Disorder (SUMD). The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance.
Findings: The intervention group showed statistically significant increase in insight, but no significant difference was found between the mania symptoms among the intervention and control groups.
Psychoeducation as well as pharmacotherapy was effective in increasing insight, but had no effect on the mania symptoms among the patients with bipolar I disorder.