Dr. Benjamin Goldstein is director of the Centre for Youth Bipolar Disorder at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Last year, he won The Royal Mach-Gaensslen prize for mental health research. This prize is helping him dive deeper into his work to decipher the link between heart disease and cardiovascular disorder. He is touring Canada sharing his research, and recently spoke at The Royal.
In case you missed it, here are six things you probably didn’t know about bipolar disorder:
- The link between the heart and the brain is very strong. Mental illness and cardiovascular disease are often comorbid – people who have one are more likely to have the other.
- Bipolar disorder affects 1-5 per cent of Canadians, and is one of the most heritable psychiatric disorders. It is the fourth leading worldwide cause of youth disability.
- Bipolar disorder among adults is associated with increased vascular risk, including heart attack and stroke. This high risk is worsened, but not fully explained, by factors such as psychotropic medications, substance use, high blood pressure, and obesity.
- People with bipolar disorder have 15-17 year earlier onset of heart disease than people without mental illness, based on U.S. data.
- Only 1 in 20 teens with bipolar disorder meet recommendations for physical activity – compared to 1 in 8 among teens in general.
- We’re now thinking of bipolar disorder as a multi-system disorder. Dr. Goldstein and other researchers are finding strong links between blood vessels, the heart, the brain, and mood among youth with bipolar disorder.
To learn more about the connection between the cardiovascular system and bipolar disorder — including research about exactly why the two are connected — watch this video: