Jo’s PhD Success

We are delighted to let everyone know that Jo Johnson has successfully completed her PhD at the University of Worcester.  Jo is a midwife and health visitor who took time out of clinical practice to conduct research into referral pathways for women who require specialist mental health care during pregnancy and the postpartum.  She interviewed Read More …

‘Talking Portraits’ – interactive trail of artwork in Worcester to raise awareness of mental health

Julia Savage one of BDRN’s longest standing Research Champions has written the following article about her involvement in the Worcestershire Health Care NHS Trust ‘Now We’re Talking’ campaign. All of us at BDRN would like to thank Julia for her ongoing support of our research. “Earlier this year Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health Care NHS Trust Read More …

New study published: post-partum psychosis and its association with bipolar disorder

Our research findings on post-partum psychosis and its association with bipolar disorder have recently been published in Lancet Psychiatry. We compared genetic vulnerability to bipolar disorder and major depression in 203 women with a history of post-partum psychosis as a first lifetime psychiatric episode, 1225 women with bipolar disorder who had given birth but had Read More …

Research update from Emma Tickle

I am currently in the final stages of my PhD at the University of Worcester, writing up my research thesis exploring the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (sometimes called emotionally unstable personality disorder) in people living with bipolar disorder. Thank you again to all the participants who took part in interviews and completed the questionnaire. Read More …

PhD Success for Gemma

We are delighted to let everyone know that Gemma McCullough has successfully completed her PhD at the University of Worcester.  Many BDRN members will have met Gemma, or had telephone contact with her, when they participated in her research about the relationship between physical activity and mood in bipolar disorder. Gemma is now working in Read More …

Mood episodes in pregnancy and risk of postpartum recurrence in bipolar disorder

We have recently had the first of our publications from the Bipolar Disorder Research Network (BDRN) Prospective Pregnancy Study accepted in the Journal of Affective Disorders. 128 pregnant women with bipolar disorder very kindly contributed to the study and were followed from pregnancy through to three months postpartum. Our findings confirmed that women with bipolar disorder are Read More …

BDRN team present at the 23rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD)

Members of the BDRN team were pleased to present at the 23rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) 13-15th May 2021.  BDRN members Dr Katherine Gordon-Smith and Dr Katie Swaden Lewis, along with Dr Kate Saunders from the University of Oxford, all gave presentations during a symposium session titled Longitudinal Remote Mood Monitoring for Research Read More …

Largest genetic study of bipolar disorder provides new insight into its biology and new potential treatments

A recent study published in the journal Nature Genetics has brought the Bipolar Workgroup of the international Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), of which BDRN is a key member, one step closer to understanding the neurobiology of bipolar disorder. We are striving to better understand the genetics behind bipolar disorder. Together we studied over 7.5 million common variations Read More …

Migraine associated with early onset postpartum depression in women with major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder and migraine are both more common among women than men with women’s reproductive years being associated with increased susceptibility to both conditions. We have recently had a paper accepted in the Archives of Women’s Mental Health reporting the findings of a study examining associations between migraine and clinical features of depression in Read More …