Understanding the nature and presence of mental imagery in bipolar disorder comorbid with anxiety

Pages: 1048-1050
Daya Sindhu and Namita Pande (Department of Psychology, University of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh)

It is commonly believed among clinical psychology researchers that anxiety is an emotionally volatile disorder and in approximately 40% to 70% of cases of bipolar disorder, anxiety onset bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder having 2 poles of mood one is depression and other is mania. Anxiety and bipolar disorder now a days have very serious impact on human life and well being. Although there are various therapeutic technique and psychoactive medicine to treat these disorders but when anxiety comorbid with bipolar disorder, treatment outcome is severely reduced and attacks come frequently. Because anxiety disorders are emotionally volatile and mental imagery has a great impact on emotion, so by understanding the relationship of anxiety, imagery and bipolar disorder we can reduce treatment cost and minimize the problems of the patients. In the present study 43 bipolar patient comorbid with anxiety disorder were selected for this study by purposive sampling and examined with Beck Anxiety Scale, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD), and Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) to understand the correlation between mental imagery, anxiety and bipolar disorder. Results shows that imagery and anxiety are negatively correlated (-0.15) but value is not significant. Important finding is between mental imagery and depression that are negatively correlated (-0.493**). It is quite interesting and need to further study.