Bipolar disorder is a recurrent disease that can be unpredictable. Several guides provide clinicians evidence- based treatment options for bipolar depression.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the most frequently administered combinations of psychotropic substances and focuses on the use of single drugs in hospitalized patients with bipolar depression.

To assess concordance between clinical acute treatment and recommendations of the guides for bipolar depression.

A cross-sectional study was conducted by interviewing and physical examination of a group of 45 consecutive patients who were hospitalized between February 1 and 30 July 2012, in University Hospital of Psychiatry “Socola” and were diagnosed with bipolar depression according to ICD-10 criteria.

In our cross-sectional study average age of patients with bipolar depression was 55.7 ± 8.55 years, 66.7% female. Average number of drugs received by hospitalized patients with bipolar depression was 1.73 (SD 0.44), which increased to 3 (SD 0.81) drugs if adding sedatives. Classes of drugs most commonly prescribed in the acute treatment were benzodiazepines 86.7%, antidepressants 66.7%, antipsychotics 60% followed by anticonvulsants 40%. Monotherapy had a prevalence of 33.3% of the patients with bipolar depression.

Combinations of antidepressants with mood stabilizers and / or atypical antipsychotics are common in every day acute treatment for patients with bipolar depression. Evaluating indications and conditions of polytherapy are critical issues in future studies on the acute treatment on patients with bipolar depression.