The bipolar disorder (BD) has an important effect over the lives of patients and families. The attitude of the family is a modifiable factor through specific interventions and it has been related with BD prognosis.

Study a sample of families and patients with BD.

Compare between two groups its course of burden of caring for family members with BD. Also, we will see the course of the functionality in patients.

Sample of 148 individuals who caring a familiar with BD. Seventy-six of these followed psychoeducation session are going to be experimental group (EG), and the others 72 did not followed any session are going to be control group (CG). There is a follow-up at 6 months and one year. To see the course of the burden and the functionality it will be used mixed models.

At baseline, there were not significant differences between CG and EG in objective and subjective burden and functionality. But over time there were significant results in the three cases. For objective burden (b = −0.016; P = 0.0001) EG presented a drop (b = −0.014; P = 0.0062), while CG did not show changes (b = 0.002; P = 0.4691). For subjective burden (b = −0.014; P = 0.0058) without significant results for CG (b = −0.352; P = 0.3203) and a significant decrease in EG (b = −0.017; P = 0.003). For the functionality (b = 1.474; P = 0.000) there was a significant increase in EG (b = 1.349; P = 0.000) but not for CG (b = −0.125; P = 0.3828).

Two groups did not differ at baseline however after the psychoeducation sessions appear clear differences, decreasing the burden for EG group and the functionality also improved for EG.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.