Given that many patients with common psychiatric illnesses present to primary care rather than specialty mental health settings, psychiatrists can support primary care physicians in the treatment of patients (
1,
2). For example, depression can be effectively treated in primary care with interventions such as collaborative care, where a psychiatrist supervises a care manager in treating a population of patients (
2,
3). Patients with depression and chronic general medical illnesses treated in primary care with psychiatrist-supervised collaborative care have shown improved short- and long-term depression outcomes (
3), reduced disability from depression (
4), improved quality of life (
5), and lower total medical costs (
6,
7) compared with patients treated with usual care.
Partly because of this evidence, depression screening and treatment in primary care are gradually becoming standard clinical practice (
8). However, primary care physicians, particularly those working in safety net settings, such as public clinics and federally qualified mental health centers, are often faced with treating patients who have serious mental illnesses (
9). Unfortunately, little is known about the quality of mental health care or the course of severe and persistent mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, among primary care patients. In two systematic reviews, structured interviews have indicated that bipolar disorder occurs among as much as 4.3% of general primary care patients and up to 10% of primary care patients with a psychiatric complaint (
10,
11). Accurately recognizing bipolar disorder among patients in primary care systems is important because untreated bipolar disorder causes significant functional impairment and treatment differs from treatment of other psychiatric illnesses, such as major depression.
Patients with bipolar disorder may initially present to primary care for general health care. The prevalence of chronic general medical illnesses, such as diabetes and hypertension, is high among patients with bipolar disorder (
12–
14), and most patients generally obtain care for these conditions in primary care. In addition, prior studies have shown that 7.6% of veterans with bipolar disorder (
15) and an estimated 10% to 38% (
16) of nonveteran patients with bipolar disorder receive mental health care exclusively in primary care. Compared with patients treated in specialty mental health settings, patients with bipolar disorder treated exclusively in primary care settings were less likely to receive mood-stabilizing medications, suggesting the need to improve quality of recognition and treatment for bipolar disorder in primary care for these patients (
15).
In one longitudinal study, patients with type I bipolar disorder experienced depressive symptoms three times as often as manic or hypomanic symptoms, and in another, patients with bipolar II disorder experienced depressive symptoms 39 times as often, thus indicating that patients with bipolar disorder are much more likely to present with depressive than manic or hypomanic symptoms (
17,
18). Patients with bipolar disorder, particularly bipolar II disorder, who are experiencing depressive symptoms often present initially to primary care (
19). Psychiatrists might offer critical support and supervision for primary care physicians encountering patients with bipolar disorder.
In this study we aimed to describe the clinical characteristics of a large sample of primary care patients with bipolar disorder enrolled in an integrated care program. Increased understanding of the clinical characteristics of patients with bipolar disorder in primary care settings and identification of potential gaps in quality of care are the necessary first steps in the development of interventions to improve the quality of treatment for bipolar disorder in primary care.
Discussion
In this sample of primary care patients with bipolar disorder referred to a collaborative care mental health treatment program, most patients demonstrated moderate to severe depression, as well as comorbid psychiatric disorders, especially anxiety disorders and substance misuse. Social vulnerabilities, such as homelessness and lack of transportation, were also highly prevalent.
The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) (
27) showed that approximately 75% of patients with bipolar disorder had a lifetime history of any anxiety disorder. Specifically, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, and PTSD occurred in 29.6%, 37.8%, 20.1% and 24.2% of the sample, respectively (
27). Anxiety symptoms measured by the GAD-7 commonly occurred in our study, with 88% of patients having a score of ≥10. In addition over 90% of patients administered the PCL had a score of ≥45, indicating a high likelihood of meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD (
25). Although this result was from a subsample, it supports our finding that many of the patients had moderate to severe comorbid anxiety symptoms, such as symptoms that can occur with PTSD.
Previous studies have demonstrated that compared with persons without an anxiety disorder, patients with bipolar disorder and comorbid anxiety disorders are less likely to be euthymic, have a greater burden of depression symptoms, and may be less responsive to brief, but not more intensive, psychotherapeutic treatments (
28,
29). Enhancing the psychotherapeutic treatment of bipolar disorder and comorbid anxiety in primary care may be one way to reduce depressive and anxiety symptoms of patients with bipolar disorder (
29).
In the NCS-R, 42% of patients with bipolar disorder had ever had a substance use disorder (
27); a similar prevalence was found in a clinical sample (
30). Almost one-half of the patients in our sample reported prior treatment for a substance use disorder or current substance use. Also, one-quarter of the patients with bipolar disorder in our study demonstrated a high likelihood of current substance use problems, as indicated by a GAIN-SS score of ≥3. A score ≥1 on the GAIN-SS captures a greater number of individuals with current substance misuse who would likely benefit from a substance use intervention but have not reached the level of severity of dependence (
24). Over 40% of our sample had a GAIN-SS score of ≥1. Because substance use in bipolar disorder has been associated with greater psychosocial impairment (
31), improving functional outcomes of primary care patients with bipolar disorder likely requires assessment and treatment of co-occurring substance use problems.
Suicidal ideation was experienced by 58% of patients with bipolar disorder, which is higher than the occurrence of suicidal ideation (45%) in a previous report on the overall MHIP population (
32). In addition, a higher percentage of patients with bipolar disorder (28%) reported experiencing suicidal ideation more than half of days or nearly every day compared with the sample of patients (22%) from the previous MHIP report (
32).
Psychosocial impairments were common in our sample of patients with bipolar disorder, most notably, homelessness. Fifteen percent of patients with bipolar disorder reported being homeless, and 41% reported staying with others or in a shelter. This is consistent with research findings from a large public mental health system showing homelessness of 17% of patients with bipolar disorder who received care in the San Diego County public mental health system (
33). Our sample, which had a similar prevalence of homelessness, came from primary care settings, suggesting that homelessness is common among patients with bipolar disorder seen in primary care as well as mental health care safety net settings.
We also found that MHIP patients with bipolar disorder experienced more intensive and perhaps higher-quality treatment compared with MHIP patients with depression from a previous study of 7,941 patients (
26). The high occurrence of comorbid psychiatric illnesses, suicidal ideation, and substance misuse among the patients with bipolar disorder likely led to increased clinical contact during treatment. A higher number of clinical contacts, such as follow-up within two- and four-week periods from initial assessment and consultation with a psychiatrist, has been associated with better depression outcomes in MHIP (
26).
Although two-thirds of the patients with bipolar disorder had persistent depressive symptoms, only 26% of patients with bipolar disorder were referred to a community mental health center. Reasons for this low referral rate may include barriers to referral, such as limited community mental health resources, and patients’ preferring to receive treatment in primary care.
Limitations of the study include that our sample monitored only patients who were referred to psychiatric treatment in a collaborative care model. Our sample may have been biased toward having greater illness severity, because disability or unemployment occurs among most patients referred to MHIP. Third, some patients with bipolar disorder may not have been included in the study sample. In addition, it is possible that some patients in the bipolar sample did not have bipolar disorder, because the positive predictive value of the CIDI in primary care ranges from 59% to 73% (
20). We aimed to minimize the number of false positives by also requiring a documented clinician diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Finally, because we considered all patients with only a baseline PHQ-9 score as having no depression improvement, our estimate of depression improvement may have been conservative.