Impact of duration of untreated illness in bipolar I disorder (manic episodes) on clinical outcome, socioecnomic burden in Egyptian population

Introduction: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a serious and chronic mental illness that may result in disability. We evaluated effect of the duration of untreated of bipolar (DUB) (manic episodes) on clinical outcomes, including episode severity, residual symptoms, duration of hospitalization, and suicide attempts, and on socioeconomic status of patients. Methods: A total of 216 participants who had bipolar I disorder (manic state) recruited from November 2017-December 2019 from an inpatient psychiatric unit. Patients divided into 2 groups based on DUB: Group A, with DUB < 4 months; and Group B, with DUB >= 4 months. All participants had evaluation for demographic and clinical features, Socioeconomic scale, Young mania rating scale (YMRS) at admission and discharge. Results: Group A participants were more often male, urban residents, married, literate and educated, professionally employed. Group A had a younger age of onset, less duration of illness, less frequency of episode, less suicide attempts, less duration in hospital, high mean of socioeconomic, lower mean of YMRS at admission and discharge in compared to Group B. Conclusion: A longer DUB (manic episodes)was associated with negative clinical outcomes (more frequent episode, more symptoms severity, longer hospital admission, more suicide severity, more residual symptoms) and low socioeconomic state of patients with BDI (manic episodes).