Bipolar and OCD Run Together
A playful placement of pills. (Credit: me and the sysop) .
“I’m using this with my cognitive therapist and it’s… amazing.”
I got this email from Christopher, a CureTogether member with Bipolar Disorder:
“I have never found a more useful “biofeedback” tool. It has helped me enormously in understanding my Bipolar I condition… You’ve seriously changed my life.”
Words like Christopher’s inspire us to keep doing the work we’re doing, and putting out discoveries like today’s. So here goes.
We found a strong association between Bipolar Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which independent studies published in established journals also confirm. In graphical form:
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People at CureTogether who report Bipolar Disorder are five times more likely to report Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder than members with no Bipolar Disorder. This comes from a study of 464 people sharing data online for the past year.
For details on this finding and how it matches up with other studies, read on…
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Details of the CureTogether Bipolar-OCD Finding
Among 30 people reporting Bipolar Disorder in this study, 14 (46.7%) reported also having Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, and the remaining 16 specifically reported not having Obsessive-compulsive Disorder.
Among 434 people reporting “No Bipolar Disorder” in this study, 44 (10.1%) reported having Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, and the remaining 390 people specifically reported not having Obsessive-compulsive Disorder.
This 46.7% vs. 10.1% difference represents a statistically significant relative risk of 4.6, with a 99% confidence interval of 2.9 – 7.4.
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Other Bipolar-OCD Research
The importance of this finding is that using only self-reported data, we have found an association between bipolar disorder and OCD that has previously been explored only in clinical studies such as the following:
- (Credit: Chuck Falzone)
1. Bipolar and OCD are co-morbid in children and adolescents – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17822342
2. OCD onset may precede Bipolar onset in women with the co-morbidity – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15962140
3. A longitudinal study of 591 patients found significant co-morbidity of OCD and Bipolar – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15711895
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Self-Reported Data at CureTogether
CureTogether has been called “Yelp for health.” It is a collaboration of people from around the world volunteering to solve real problems in chronic conditions.
People self-report and rate symptoms and treatments for over 410 conditions. The top conditions at CureTogether are depression, anxiety, migraine, back pain, and vulvodynia.
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Take a peek at the top-rated:
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