title: Aims and structure of the German Research Consortium BipoLife for the study of bipolar disorder.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Bipolar disorder is a severe and heterogeneous mental disorder. Despite great advances in neuroscience over the past decades, the precise causative mechanisms at the transmitter, cellular or network level have so far not been unraveled. As a result, individual treatment decisions cannot be tailor-made and the uncertain prognosis is based on clinical characteristics alone. Although a subpopulation of patients have an excellent response to pharmacological monotherapy, other subpopulations have been less well served by the medical system and therefore require more focused attention. In particular individuals at high risk of bipolar disorder, young patients in the early stages of bipolar disorder, patients with an unstable highly relapsing course and patients with acute suicidal ideation have been identified as those in need.
  A research consortium of ten universities across Germany has therefore implemented a 4 year research agenda including three randomized controlled trials, one epidemiological trial and one cross-sectional trial to address these areas of unmet needs. The topics under investigation will be the improvement of early recognition, specific psychotherapy, and smartphones as an aid for early episode detection and biomarkers of lithium response. A subset of patients will be investigated utilizing neuroimaging (fMRI), neurophysiology (EEG), and biomaterials (genomics, transcriptomics).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This article aims to outline the rationale, design, and methods of these individual studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden, Fetscherstr. 74, 01307, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Philipp S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Ritter
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Charité im St. Hedwig-Krankenhaus, Große Hamburger Str. 5, 10115, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bermpohl
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Voßstr. 4, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gruber
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Eberhard Karls University, Schleichstr. 4, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hautzinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.|Marburg & Core-Unit Brain Imaging, Philipps-University Marburg, Rudolf-Bultmann-Str. 8, 35039, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Preventive Medicine, LWL University Hospital, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Juckel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.|Marburg & Core-Unit Brain Imaging, Philipps-University Marburg, Rudolf-Bultmann-Str. 8, 35039, Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Tilo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kircher
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine, Psychosis Centre, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lambert
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine, Psychosis Centre, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mulert
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden, Fetscherstr. 74, 01307, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pfennig
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Reif
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Otto
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rienhoff
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), Medical Center of the University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Schulze
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden, Fetscherstr. 74, 01307, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Emanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Severus
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Charité im St. Hedwig-Krankenhaus, Große Hamburger Str. 5, 10115, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stamm
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden, Fetscherstr. 74, 01307, Dresden, Germany. Michael.Bauer@uniklinikum-dresden.de.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2666-859X
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bauer
keywords: Ambulatory monitoring; BipoLife; Bipolar disorder; Early recognition; Psychotherapy; Randomized controlled trial; Research consortium