Interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT) is a manual-based
adjunctive psychotherapy specific to the treatment of bipolar disorder.
This paper reviews the theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for
the efficacy of IPSRT in combination with pharmacotherapy for adults with
bipolar I disorder. We then provide an overview of the developmental
modifications being made to IPSRT to increase its relevance to adolescents
with bipolar disorder.To protect
confidentiality, case examples are composites of several different
adolescents receiving IPSRT. Patients' real names were not used in
this report. The authors are grateful to Elizabeth McCauley and Carolyn
McCarty for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
We also thank Laura Mufson for her sage advice regarding the developmental
adaptations being made to IPSRT to be more relevant to adolescents with
bipolar disorder. This work was supported by National Institute of Mental
Health (Bethesda, MD) Grants MH70570 (S.H.) and MH29618 (E.F.) and General
Clinical Research Center Grant M01-RR00037.