Psychodynamic evaluation of bipolar diagnosed individuals

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder which is characterized by one or several manic and/or hypomanic episodes, also sometimes it is accompanied by depressive episodes. The prevalence is around 3% and the age of onset is mostly below the age of 25 (Merikangas et al., 2011). Researches show that only half of the patients had diagnosed correctly and most of the time the ones who had diagnosed, couldn't have recovered fully (Geddes & Miklowitz, 2013). It is also worth to be interested that even though the most proved beneficial common treatment combination is pharmacotherapy with cognitive behavioural psychotherapy, bipolar disorder's nature is a true mystery. Based on the gaps in the literature, this study aims to premise a larger point of the view about the disease and possible treatment strategies. In this study, The Inventory of Personality Organization, which is developed by Kernberg in 1995, is used to get a better understanding of the individuals' psychodynamic features. And also, to determine the sample is euthymic, Young Mania Rating Scale and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale are used. The study's results which ran by 45 participants are that bipolar patients mostly tend to use primitive defense mechanisms, have identity diffusion and have a functional reality perception.