| Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy (IPSRT), which is an empirically supported, adjunctive, psychosocial treatment for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder (BD), was implemented in a moderately sized Midwestern outpatient behavioral health clinic that was underutilizing psychotherapeutic interventions. IPSRT supplements psychopharmacological treatment in clients diagnosed with BD and was implemented to promote stabilization of social rhythms and to begin to positively impact quality of life (QOL) in people diagnosed with BD. The project aimed to do this by providing eight weekly 120-minute sessions of Group IPSRT (GIPSRT), during which participants' social rhythm stabilization was measured via Ellen Franks' (2005) Social Rhythm Metric, short version (SRM-II). QOL was measured via the World Health Organization's QOL scale, brief version (WHOQOL-BREF) (Bonomi, Patrick, Bushnell, & Martin, 2000). Although not statistically significant, the results of SRM-II and WHOQOL-BREF indicated an improvement in social rhythm stabilization and QOL among all participants. Results were presented to the pilot site administrators, who are now considering making group therapy available to all clients within the pilot clinic. A replication with a larger sample size is needed to explore possible relationships between IPSRT and improved QOL for people diagnosed with BD.;Keywords: IPSRT, bipolar disorder, treatment, group therapy, psychotherapeutic. |
