There is a significant shift in the focus of care throughout the medical profession, where care in the community, alongside patient education and empowerment are being prioritised. We, as care providers, should be looking to reflect this in the management of bipolar disorder by empowering our patients to manage their own condition. Of course the difficulty with this is that with any psychiatric disorder, self-monitoring and patient-led care is dependent on the patient being competent to make appropriate decisions and having insight into the effect of their condition on their life. It is therefore a difficult balance to control, between clinician-led and patient-led care, but one that could be potentially liberating for many of our patients trying to run their lives alongside their condition.
Keywords: bipolar disorder, community, empowerment, self-monitoring, insight