Project details

Summary

What is the study about?

BART II is a research trial looking at whether a new kind of CBT is helpful for people who may be at risk of developing Bipolar Disorder (BD). CBT aims to help people to understand and manage their changes in mood, and to improve their quality of life.

BART Animation on Vimeo.

CBT is a talking therapy that has proved helpful for a range of psychological difficulties. The CBT used in the BART trial is based on the idea that how people think about their mood or other factors such as energy levels can lead to cycles of feeling, thinking and behaviour that can escalate, leading to mood swings and episodes continuing. 

CBT helps to identify these cycles, and in turn to help people manage changes in mood, and to improve their quality of life. CBT could potentially provide many advantages such as helping people to recover more quickly from difficult experiences and live their lives in the way in which they would like

What are you trying to find out?

Recently criteria have been developed to identify the experiences of individuals who have mood swings and are therefore considered at risk of developing Bipolar Disorder. These criteria are called Bipolar At Risk (BAR). This study would like to extend previous research by using the criteria to identify people with these experiences and find out if offering them a new kind of CBT (called CBTBAR) is helpful.

What does taking part involve?

Sometimes, because we do not know which way of treating individuals is best, we need to make comparisons. Therefore, people who take part in this trial will either be allocated to receive CBTBAR plus their usual treatment or treatment as usual alone. The allocation to either CBTBAR plus treatment as usual or treatment as usual alone is done at random i.e. by chance. We will compare those who receive CBTBAR from the trial to those who receive only their treatment as usual. This means that half of the people that agree to take part will be offered CBTBAR in addition to their usual treatment.

CBTBAR is a talking therapy, designed to work with people to help them to identify the effects of their thinking patterns on their mood. A maximum of 26 therapy sessions will be available focusing on the main difficulties you are experiencing at that time. You and your therapist will agree on tasks to be completed by you between therapy sessions. These tasks may involve practising skills learned in therapy, reading over information or trying out new ways of approaching your experiences.

Who is it for?

We are inviting people to take part in the study if they are experiencing mood swings and aged between 16 to 25. This may mean that at times you feel high in mood, which can include feeling energetic, activated and talkative. However, at other times you may feel low in mood which may mean you feel sad, tired, lacking in energy and get less pleasure from the things that you used to enjoy.

Why is it important? 

For 50% of people in the study we hope that being randomly allocated into the CBTBAR intervention will be helpful. It is possible that the CBTBAR intervention will improve mental health difficulties that you are experiencing. However, this cannot be guaranteed. The information we get from this study may help us in the future to better treat people who have problems related to concerns about mood swings.

In both CBTBAR and the treatment as usual group, there will be regular appointments throughout the year with a research assistant. Participants from our previous BART study reported that these appointments were helpful.

How can I find out more?

You can find out more information about taking part in this study by downloading the key documents at the top of this page. You can also visit JUICE research unit's project website here. 

If you are interested in taking part in this study, or have questions for the research team, click the button below to email us:

Email the research team