Social support and bipolar disorder

Abstract

Background: Bipolar disorder is a chronic condition that affects the functioning of its carriers in many different ways, even when treated properly. Therefore, it's also important to identify the psychosocial aspects that could contribute to an improvement of this population's quality of life. Objective: Carry out a literature review on the role of social support in cases of bipolar disorder. Method: A research on the following online databases PubMed, Lilacs and SciELO was conducted by using the keywords "social support" or "social networks" and "mood disorders" or "bipolar disorder" or "affective disorder, " with no defined timeline. Results: Only 13 studies concerning the topic of social support and BD were found in the search for related articles. Generally speaking, the results show low rates of social support for BD patients. Discussion: Despite the growing interest in the overall functioning of patients with bipolar disorder, studies on social support are still rare. Besides, the existing studies on the subject use different methodologies, making it difficult to establish data comparisons.

Associations between loneliness and perceived social support and outcomes of mental health problems: a systematic review

“…Given that the prevalence of loneliness in people with psychosis was comparable to that in people with depression, it is surprising that research about impact of loneliness/perceived social support on psychosis is scarce. Similarly, social relationships were shown to be related to bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders, but there is a lack of evidence to discern cause and effect [ 69 , 70 ]. Therefore more systematic exploration is needed about how loneliness and perceived social support affect conditions such as psychosis, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders.…”

Resilience dimensions and mental health outcomes in bipolar disorder in a follow‐up study

“…Thus, we built the mediational model following the simplified method proposed for two‐wave designs, which represents only a limited approach to the study of indirect effects among variables (Little, ). Furthermore, inclusion criteria for participants with BD from the current study were broad, including great diagnostic heterogeneity, and differences may arise depending on BD type (e.g., BD type I or BD type II) and on the episode type (e.g., depressive or manic; Studart, Bezerra Filho, Studart, Almeida, & Miranda‐Scippa, ). Additionally, subjective measures of mental health in BD might have been systematically influenced by the disorder's varying mood and severity and cognitive symptoms, as well as by psychological confounding variables that we did not control for, such as personality type or individual early maladaptive schemas (Michalak et al, ) or attachment patterns (Cyrulnik, ).…”

Relationship Between Quality of Life and Social Support Among Patients with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Social support is S. Prabhakaran JIPMER, Puducherry, India e-mail: sayujyacp@gmail.com an important psychosocial factor and has a bidirectional relationship in both BD and schizophrenia. It has been conceptualized in two ways-the qualitative or structural aspect (which deals with social network size and frequency of social interactions) and qualitative or functional (which deals with the quality of social relationships like perceived emotional or instrumental support), both of them influence QoL [38]. It acts as a buffer/ protective agent by mitigating the adverse consequences by enhancing the individuals coping against acute or chronic stressors as well promoting well-being, self-esteem and boosts morale, [9] thereby preventing relapse due to enhanced treatment adherence and functionality due to better assistance from family and friends [24,38,41].…”

“…It has been conceptualized in two ways-the qualitative or structural aspect (which deals with social network size and frequency of social interactions) and qualitative or functional (which deals with the quality of social relationships like perceived emotional or instrumental support), both of them influence QoL [38]. It acts as a buffer/ protective agent by mitigating the adverse consequences by enhancing the individuals coping against acute or chronic stressors as well promoting well-being, self-esteem and boosts morale, [9] thereby preventing relapse due to enhanced treatment adherence and functionality due to better assistance from family and friends [24,38,41]. Both these groups of patients with schizophrenia and BD have been found to have poor social support when compared to the general population [5,12,13,29].…”

“…They suffer from social network contraction [12,28] owing to the deficit in their social cognition [31] and persistent residual symptoms which can lead to stress in the family due to lack of social support [36]. Similarly, in patients with BD, poor social support predicts poorer treatment outcomes [8], more depressive relapses [8,22,38,42], poor response to lithium, [25] and disruption of the biological rhythms [2,15] leading to a vicious cycle of relapse and hampering their social relationship even further ultimately QoL [16]. One study, where patients suffering from severe mental illness (Schizophrenia and affective disorders) where assessed for the association between occupational status and QoL, which revealed that social support mediated the relationship between them [35].…”