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Cognition in children with bipolar disorder

What is cognition in children with bipolar disorder?

Deficits across various cognitive domains are a common feature of bipolar disorder. These are strongly associated with difficulties in activities of daily living. Early age at onset of the illness is associated with more severe symptoms and poor prognosis than later age at onset. Identifying cognitive deficits in children contributes to the development of specific treatments and rehabilitation approaches.

What is the evidence regarding cognition in children with bipolar disorder?

Moderate quality evidence finds large impairments in global cognition, verbal and visual learning and memory, and working memory in youth with bipolar disorder, compared to youth without the disorder that are of similar age (average 13 years) and IQ (average 104). There were no differences in attention, reasoning, problem solving, and processing speed.

High quality evidence finds a medium to large effect of reduced emotion recognition in youth with bipolar disorder. Moderate quality evidence finds a large effect of reduced theory of mind, which is the ability to infer the mental states of other people.

Moderate quality evidence finds a medium to large effect of poorer accuracy on emotion recognition in youth with bipolar disorder compared to age-matched controls. There was a smaller, non-significant effect of poorer response time. Unmedicated youth showed longer response times than medicated youth. Caucasian youth with bipolar disorder showed both longer response times and poorer accuracy than non-Caucasian youth.

October 2021

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Last updated at: 11:46 pm, 10th October 2021
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Fact Sheet Technical Commentary
Tags:  Children and adolescents

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