Bipolar disorder is a serious psychiatric illness that usually emerges during adolescence or early adulthood, and patients are likely to experience recurrent episodes throughout their lives. The treatment of bipolar disorder is complicated by the difficulty in distinguishing between subtly different disease subtypes (bipolar I, bipolar II, rapid cycling and mixed episodes), each of which is associated with a different probability of treatment success. Furthermore, physicians are faced with an array of treatment options that includes mood stabilisers, antidepressants, and typical and atypical antipsychotics.

Patients with bipolar disorders experience cyclical changes in mood that present as a range of different syndromes. In classical mania, patients experience episodes of euphoria, whereas in depressive episodes they suffer from depression. In hypomania, patients experience a milder form of mania, and in mixed mania, patients may experience both manic and depressive symptoms simultaneously, or alternate between them rapidly. Because of this wide range of symptoms, bipolar disorders can appear to overlap with other mental disorders, especially personality disorders.

Mood disorders that have no medical or pharmacological causes are divided into depressive disorders (unipolar, or major depressive disorder) and bipolar disorders. In bipolar disorders, both depressive and manic episodes occur sequentially.

A manic episode is characterised as an abnormally excited mood that is experienced by a patient for a distinct period (at least a week). Diagnosis of mania requires that a patient’s work and social life be significantly affected, or that the patient needs hospitalisation. Diagnosis also requires the presence of three or more of the following symptoms: inflated self-esteem or grandiosity; decreased need for sleep; increased talkativeness; racing thoughts/ideas; distraction; increased goal-directed activity; excessive involvement in pleasurable activities [1].

Mood stabilising therapy is the cornerstone of treatment for bipolar disorder, a disease that is commonly associated with disabling psychosocial morbidity [37,11]. A variety of drugs have been approved for use in bipolar disorder, thus providing a wide array of options for clinicians when deciding on a course of treatment [28]. In order to assist clinical decision-making, facilitate optimal quality of care and reduce unnecessary variation in clinical practice, several clinical practice guidelines and treatment algorithms have been developed [4,19,20,21]. As well as similarities, there are some differences between guidelines developed from an American perspective and those developed from a European perspective [4,19], and there is a pervasive view in the clinical community that treatment of patients with bipolar disorder differs substantially between the United States (US) and Europe. This article discusses what is known about the similarities and differences of treatment practices for bipolar disorder between the US and Europe.