Once Bipolar Disorder is diagnosed, patients will have on average 10 episodes of illness during their lifetime.
It used to be thought that patients “returned to normal” between episodes, but recent research points towards a number of persistent problems:
From: Judd et al. The long term natural history of Bipolar 1 Disorder. Archives of general psychiatry (59) 2002 AND Krishnan. Psychiatric & medical co-morbidities of Bipolar Disorder. Psychosomatic Medicine (67) 2005