The British Association for Psychopharmacology guidelines specify the scope and targets of treatment for bipolar disorder. The third version is based explicitly on the available evidence and presented, like previous Clinical Practice Guidelines, as recommendations to aid clinical decision making for practitioners: it may also serve as a source of information for patients and carers, and assist audit. The recommendations are presented together with a more detailed review of the corresponding evidence. A consensus meeting, involving experts in bipolar disorder and its treatment, reviewed key areas and considered the strength of evidence and clinical implications. The guidelines were drawn up after extensive feedback from these participants. The best evidence from randomized controlled trials and, where available, observational studies employing quasi-experimental designs was used to evaluate treatment options. The strength of recommendations has been described using the GRADE approach. The guidelines cover the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, clinical management, and strategies for the use of medicines in short-term treatment of episodes, relapse prevention and stopping treatment. The use of medication is integrated with a coherent approach to psychoeducation and behaviour change.

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Models of the relapse process set out to provide a rich description of the cognitive, behavioral, motivational, and contextual factors associated with a sexual offense. Theory at this level typically includes an explicit temporal factor and focuses on proximal causes or the how of sexual offending. Pithers's adaptation of the relapse prevention treatment model to sexual offenders is based on a particular view of the relapse process. In this approach, relapse is essentially caused by an inability to cope effectively with high-risk situations. Although this influential perspective has contributed greatly to the treatment of sexual offenders, it suffers from a number of conceptual and empirical problems. In this article, we present a self-regulation model of the relapse process that addresses these problems and accounts for the diversity of relapse pathways.

A grounded theory approach was taken to the qualitative analysis of the descriptions of thoughts and feelings provided by 26 incarcerated child molesters while describing their most recent or typical offense. The resulting descriptive model comprised nine stages, with three contributing factors that describe the sequence of cognitive and behavioral events that form an offense chain. The model incorporates offender type, offense type, and offers a description of the possible interactions between the various stages and factors. The model was then applied to the offense descriptions of an independent sample of 12 incarcerated child molesters in order to ascertain its cross-sample validity and the reliability of classification. The results suggest that the model has provisional validity and adequate interrater reliability. The theoretical, research, and clinical implications of the descriptive model are then discussed.

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