Highlights of this issue

Abstract

Bipolar disorder: white matter, serotonin and relapse prevention Regional cortical white matter changes have been observed in bipolar disorder, and Macritchie and colleagues (pp. 52–58 ) examined cortical white matter in patients with euthymic bipolar disorder, using diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging, and found significant changes in these patients compared with controls. In line with this theme of cultural variation in psychiatric presentation, Manoranjitham et al (pp. 26–30 ) examined risk factors for suicide in southern India and found alcohol dependence and adjustment disorders to be the most frequently associated psychiatric diagnoses. Overall, they conclude that psychosocial stress and social isolation rather than psychiatric disorder were the significant risk factors for suicide; they discuss differences with the Western data – suggesting that overall levels of suicide are higher in low- and middle-income countries and thus psychiatric disorder forms a much smaller proportion of the risk in these countries.