Bipolar disorder, pregnancy and childbirth research hopes to lead better prediction and treatments for episodes of illness following childbirth in women with bipolar disorder.

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The Cardiff University Psychiatry Service (CUPS) offers second opinion or consultation to patients, with the aim of assisting and advising clinicians and their patients in diagnosis and management. Requests for a second opinion must be made by the doctor in charge of the care of an individual’s mental health (Psychiatrist or GP). It is not possible to accept self-referrals. There is no charge for this service (either to the patient or the referring NHS Trust).

Address
Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University, Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ Wales

Contact Person / Email
UpadhyayEA@Cardiff.ac.uk

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True Colours is an innovative new mood monitoring system True Colours to BDRN members. True Colours is an easy-to-use online technology that enables individuals to monitor their mood in an active and ongoing way by sending email prompts asking individuals to answer simple questions about their mood. Answers are converted into a graph, that can be printed off, and over time will show changes and/or patterns in mood that may be helpful. The system has been designed by our colleagues at the University of Oxford and it is hoped the system will help researchers learn more about how mood symptoms change over time in individuals with bipolar disorder and how they are affected by changes in routines such as sleep. True Colours is available to all past BDRN participants and also individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder living in the UK.

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Bipolar UK Mood Scale is a mood scale to help describe one's moods. It is possible to use this Mood Scale with our Mood Diary to help keep track of your moods.

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Bipolar UK's eCommunity is a supportive online forum for everyone affected by bipolar. The  eCommunity gives an individual a safe and secure space to discuss the challenges you face, and to share your experiences with others. The eCommunity has over 17,000 members and is a free service supported by donations.
 

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Bipolar Uk's Employment Support Service is offered to support individuals affected by bipolar and who are experiencing issues in the workplace.. The Employment Support Service is open to both employers and employees to offer practical support, training and resources.

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As a national bipolar charity, Bipolar works with an international team of specialist advisers.

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The Support Line offers practical information, advice and support by phone and email as well as through information on their website. They provide advice on how to support a loved one, information on how to manage your bipolar and links to useful support services.

The Peer Support callout service provides an appointment based service providing outbound telephone calls with a trained volunteer who also has experience of Bipolar. The volunteer talks through any issues you have on your mind and share their experience to help you find a way forward together. The emphasis will be on self-management; using coping strategies in order to stay well and recover from the illness. All telephone calls will be by appointment only for up to 30 minutes and one off, unless specific support is identified during the call in which case you will be contacted by a member of the Support Line team the next day.

Contact Person / Email
info@bipolaruk.org

Call 0333 323 3880

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Bipolar UK has a range of information to support people for children aged under 25 and family members.

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The Annual High School Essay Contest is an annual Essay contest.

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The Corporate Anti-Stigma Campaign endorses a society that is free from the stigma and discrimination of mental illness. It recognizes that stigma and discrimination 

• Affects the basic human rights of those living with mental health challenges, including their right to be treated with dignity and respect,
• Serves as an impediment to live full, meaningful and productive lives in the community,
• Hinders recognition, open acknowledgement, and effective management and recovery of their lives,
• Affects the allocation of resources for effective diagnostic, treatment and community support services,

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Contact Person / Email
mentalhealthpatch@ibpf.org

The Healthy Living with Bipolar Disorder book is written for both people living with bipolar disorder and their caregivers. The book is available in a PDF, Kindle, or hard copy. Healthy Living with Bipolar Disorder is broken into 3-sections:

• About Bipolar Disorder: includes chapters on Children and Adolescents, Treatment, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Pregnancy, Stigma, and Aging 
• Healthy Living: includes chapters on Medication, Nutrition, Natural Treatments, Spirituality and Faith, The Workplace, College, Social Interactions, Travel, and the Caregiver 
• Resources: Medication Charts, Medication Side Effect Checklist, Mood Chart, Exercise Journal, and more

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The International Bipolar Foundation Speakers Bureau is a program that provides presentations to schools, non-profit and for-profit organizations, local community events and other instituations nationwide to hear a trained mental health speaker share their experiences and stories.

The Treatment and Support Resources are a database of resources such as support groups, treatment centers, psychiatrists, and therapists.

Contact Person / Email
info@ibpf.org

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The International Bipolar Foundation have a live webinar almost every week with experts on different areas of bipolar disorder. Each webinar is recorded and posted to our website. The webinars go in depth on specific topics and are designed to help you learn more about different treatment options, developing research trends, or everyday tips for managing symptoms. A wide variety of topics are covered, here are some examples that are especially useful for caregivers:

• Convincing a Loved One to Get Counseling
• Childhood Bipolar Disorder
• Mood Disorders in Teens
• Bipolar Support for Families
• Genetic Counseling
• Bipolar Disorder during College
• Romantic Love and Mania
• A Family Conversation about Mental Illness
• Personal stories of people who successfully live with bipolar disorder and share what has worked for them, like Hakeem Rahim or Gabe Howard.

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World Bipolar Day takes place each year on March 30, the birthday of Vincent van Gogh who is believed to have had bipolar disorder. 

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The Youtube Question and Answer Series is a series of youtube videos where experts in the field answer common questions about bipolar disorder. Some are from a medical perspective and others are from people who have lived experience with bipolar disorder. Here are some examples:

• How do I help my significant other understand bipolar disorder?
• How is bipolar studied since it so different for each person?
• What are some coping strategies for bipolar disorder? 

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The International Society for Bipolar Disorders has 27 chapters.The work of the chapters is to provide local opportunities for members to:

• Network
• Share information 
• Engage with the public
• Organize World Bipolar Day and other advocacy events  

Contact Person / Email
Jillo@isbd.org

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The International Society for Bipolar Disorders recognizes that there are many unanswered questions central to developing treatments and improving clinical care for those living with bipolar illness. One of ISBD’s earliest initiatives formed Task Forces, bringing together global contributors with expertise in specific areas to address current unmet needs in bipolar science. ISBD Task Forces have explored a wide range of topics over the years, including areas of scientific inquiry which do not always receive top research priority. Topics investigated by past Task Forces include:

• Diagnostic guidelines
• Reproductive health
• Suicide prevention
• Cognitive impairment in bipolar disorder
• Safety monitoring
• Standardization of terminology in clinical trials

Supporting ISBD’s commitment to producing accessible educational content, our Task Forces translate their findings across a variety of media to deliver updates from the scientific community in a way that can be useful to clinicians, patients, and caregivers. Over ISBD’s history, our Task Forces have developed:

• Scientific guidelines
• Consensus papers
• Educational workshops
• Webinars
• Tip sheets
• Conference symposia

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The Webinar Library is a collaboration of top researchers and clinicians presenting topics highlighting high-level science and developments in treatment techniques.   

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The International Society for Bipolar Disorder;s omen’s Initiative committee develops, supports, and enhances the opportunities available to women in the areas of mentorship, career advancement, and leadership roles within the Society and in the field.  The preliminary goals for the group include the following:

• A survey of opportunities within the ISBD for women, including within the board, committees, task forces, and scientific program of our annual meetings.
• The development of shared learning, networking, and mentorship activities within the Society’s annual meeting.

The Initiative was formally launched during the 16th Annual meeting of the ISBD in Toronto with a brief introduction, a brainstorming session, and an opportunity to sign up to participate in the group. Most recently, the group met in Washington, D.C. for a very successful lunch meeting featuring Dr. Sophia Frangou speaking about the challenges women in science face throughout their career.  A mentoring program has also started with the Initiative's first year group meeting at the conference.

Contact Person / Email
Christinap@isbd.org

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World Bipolar Day (WBD) is a world-wide awareness initiative of ISBD in conjunction with the Asian Network of Bipolar Disorder (ANBD) and the International Bipolar Foundation (IBPF). Through international collaboration, WBD provides a platform for:

• Global education
• Open discussion
• Improved sensitivity about bipolar disorder

WBD offers an opportunity to connect with others as well as assistance in gaining access to valuable resources and relationships that can improve their lives through treatment. WBD’s ultimate goal is to inspire a global shift in thinking that will eliminate social stigma and promote acceptance by encouraging people to organize, publicize, and attend local events. WBD reaches out to patients, families and advocacy groups, to encourage them to work together throughout the globe to sensitize and bring awareness to bipolar disorders. WBD is a platform to think global and act local.

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Center for the Ketamine Clinical Study is a website that provides all the information and links relevant to the Ketamine Clinical Study. This research conducts a behavioral profile which describes those children on the bipolar spectrum who are most severely affected by the illness (the Fear of Harm (FOH) phenotype). The Ketamine Clinical Study will be a formal test of the pilot study results

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The Clinician Pathway Program is a diagnostic assessment program for Juvenile Bipolar Disorder. The Diagnostic Assessment Program for Juvenile Bipolar Disorder is designed for use in clinical and research settings to screen for bipolar disorder in children from parent and child reports. The program provides preliminary diagnostic and symptom severity measures, as well as scaled scores of other key symptom dimensions (anxiety, sleep/wake disturbance, mania, sensory sensitivity and others). It includes two easy-to-use self-administered questionnaires:

• The Child Bipolar Questionnaire (CBQ) for parents and
• The Jeannie and Jeffrey Illustrated Interview for Children (J/J)

The CBQ has collected profile data on over 19,000 children with a community diagnosis of bipolar disorder or at risk for the disorder. The large numbers of subject profiles have allowed investigators to:

• Identify a highly heritable trait of the disorder
• Identify a new view of the disorder based on behavioral dimensions
• Determine the heritability of the resulting dimensions through concordance analysis
• Further refine and investigate the most salient heritable features
• Arrive at a highly refined, clinically homogeneous and heritable phenotype, called the FOH phenotype, which can easily be identified by 4 factors of the CBQ with 96% accuracy.
• Propose a hypothesis of the underlying biology of the FOH phenotype as well as identify a potential biomarker for the illness.

The effectiveness of the CBQ to rapidly, inexpensively and accurately identify phenotypes of pediatric bipolar disorder eliminates obstacles posed by previous screening and diagnostic instruments. Additionally, the inherent flexibility of the CBQ ensures that it will continue to be a means to identify other behavioral subtypes in the future. The broad scope of symptoms it captures can be examined and re-examined under the focus of different lenses. As the field of psychiatric research moves more into a dimensional, rather than categorical framework, the data will stand ready to continue yielding specific subtypes that can lead to more insight and better, more targeted treatment.

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Illustrated Interview for Children is an interview for Children (J/J), the pediatric companion instrument to the CBQ.  It is the first assessment tool for bipolar disorder designed specifically for children. The J/J has comic-strip style illustrations that engage the child’s interest while diminishing the threat of self-disclosure.  This format promotes the child’s willingness and ability to reveal mood states, fears, suicidal thoughts and/or hallucinations that he or she may be unwilling to talk about with the parent and clinician.

Through the child’s responses to the various illustrations the psychiatrist, therapist and parent are able to gain insight into the child’s internal world.  The child, through his or her responses to pictures, is able to communicate ideologies which he or she is unable or unwilling to express orally.  The ability to share these thoughts/feelings/emotions/hallucinations makes the child feel less isolated and alone.  Moreover, the completed diagnostic instrument gives information so that medical and therapeutic interventions can be tailored to each child’s concerns and subjective feelings as well as to his or her behaviors. Each questions is illustrated with pictures designed to allow the child to endorse a symptom or behavior without the use of words.

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JBRF Professional Listserv is an online forum to professionals around the world who diagnose, treat or supervise the treatment of children and adolescents with bipolar disorder. The Professional Listserv provides a venue for the free exchange of expertise and clinical observations among professionals as well as a format in which clinicians can elicit the opinions of others for treatment options and diagnostic questions.

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The Expert Diagnostic Workshop on Juvenile-onset Bipolar Disorder is an expert diagnostic workshop to examine case descriptions, course of illness, and comprehensive information (in the form of a diagnostic interview, K-SADS P/L, as well as individual behavioral and symptom inventories derived from parents, clinicians, teachers, and the patients), clinicians and researchers will have an opportunity to examine, deliberate, and then discuss the various features, advantages and disadvantages of four separate diagnostic schemas – the standard set of diagnostic criteria derived from adult studies and published in the DSM-IV, and 3 other proposed sets of diagnostic criteria for juvenile-onset bipolar disorder: the Narrow, Broad, and Core phenotypes. Not merely an academic exercise, the data that emerges from this diagnostic workshop, coupled with open deliberations and discussions with peers in on-line forums, will, potentially, have significant implications for treatment decisions, planning and outcome, as well as for future epidemiological and genetic studies.

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