The Pattern of Adherence in Patients with Bipolar I Disorder; an Eight Weeks Study

Objectives: Non-adherence limits the effectiveness of medications among patients withbipolar disorder. Many studies have investigated the predicting factors of non-adherence. Thispaper aims to present the pattern of adherence in patients with bipolar I disorder (BID).Methods: Seventy six patients with BID enrolled in a prospective study. The MedicationPossession Ratio (MPR) was used to evaluate patients adherence to medications, and repeatedmeasure analysis was performed to reveal the pattern of variations. A Persian translation ofDrug Attitude Inventory (DAI-10) (shortened version) was used to assess the attitude ofpatients toward medications.Results: the repeated measure analysis revealed that the adherence to medicationssuccessively decreased (p 0.001). Age, gender, marital status, educational level, comorbidsubstance abuse did not alter the pattern.Conclusion: There is a decreasing pattern in the adherence to medications among BIDpatients, regardless of known predicting factors of non-adherence. It means even fully adherentpatients could potentially become non-adherents during the course of maintenance treatment.