in English language journals between 1971 and
2003 were identified. Additional hand searching
was undertaken for articles referred to in these
papers. We also collected descriptive articles on
good clinical practice in CBT for BD that had been
published,e.g. chapters or books during this time
frame. A total of 127 papers were identified of
which 73 were not used in the final review. Papers
not included in the final review were mainly
excluded for four reasons: because they mainly
concerned interventions on other psychiatric disorders
(e.g. unipolar depression,personality disorders
or psychotic disorders); they did not specify
the method used in the study; they were brief
reports or letters to editors or the reports were
anecdotal or single-case studies. We also included
eight review articles and 40 descriptive articles