This readable guide to the assessment and management of patients with bipolar disorder can help physicians keep abreast of dramatic and rapid advances of recent years and integrate them into their practice. Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of Bipolar Disorders emphasizes recent controlled studies and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved indications and translates these data into the real world of clinical practice. The contributions of the eleven chapter authors from Stanford University reflect more than a decade of clinical research and treatment undertaken at that institution, including advances in diagnosis and interventions supported by controlled studies. The manual provides crucial information regarding diagnosis, pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and treatment of patients from special populations such as children, women, and older adults and patients with particularly challenging illness courses such as rapid cycling. This is the first book to provide quantitative assessment of potential benefit (number needed to treat) and risk (number needed to harm) for all approved treatments for bipolar disorder, providing clinicians with information needed to balance benefits and risks in order to render individualized state-of-the-art, evidence-based care. The manual describes all FDA-approved therapies reviewing efficacy, safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, illness phase specific dosing, and drug interactions and summarizes published therapeutic data, as well as results of randomized controlled clinical trials very recently presented at major scientific conferences.