Obesity in Bipolar Disorder: An Overview
Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2012 Aug 18;
McElroy SL, Keck PE
Abstract
Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with obesity, overweight, and abdominal obesity, and BD individuals with obesity have a greater illness burden.
Factors related to BD, its treatment, and the individual may all contribute to BD’s association with obesity.
Management strategies for the obese BD patient include use of medications with better metabolic profiles, lifestyle interventions, and adjunctive pharmacotherapy for weight loss.
Obesity-related psychiatric and medical comorbidities should also be assessed and managed.
Bariatric surgery may be an option for carefully selected patients. Greater research into the theoretical underpinnings and clinical management of the BD-obesity connection is needed.
PMID: 22903246
When I examine the full pathophysiology of bipolar disorder, what I find is that bipolar disorder, even in mania, intrinsically is an illness of impaired energy production at multiple levels of organization. Obesity is one possible outcome of this problem.