A new study has revealed that people who are suffering from depression are also more likely to experience psychotic-like symptoms. These symptoms including hearing of voices or the belief that other people are planning something against them are less likely to be countered by antidepressants as revealed by the study.

In addition, it also showed that bipolar disorder does not seem to be connected in any ways with treatment resistance in most patients suffering from depression. This finding is a new challenge to that known theory that most of the cases of depressions that are hard to treat are actually unrecognized bipolar disorders.

A study has been conducted in order to assess the connection of bipolar disorder and the results of the treatments among 4,041 patients suffering from depression. The said patients received an antidepressant called citalopram (Celexa) at first and then it was followed by more treatments, depending on the responses of the medicine.

During the beginning of the study, 30 percent or a total of 1,198 of the patients reported that they had experienced at least one psychotic symptom. The psychotic symptom may be the belief that they had some sort of special ability or powers or were being manipulated or controlled by others. This was experienced in the last six months. The said patients were the once who were not likely to respond to the treatment.

To add to this, a percentage of 38.1 or 1,524 patients attested that they had experienced at least one symptom of bipolarity in the last six months. Out of those symptoms, irritability was the one most associated with poor treatment results.

However, some indications of bipolar disorder, which includes the history of maniac symptoms and family history of the said condition, were not connected to the responses of patients from antidepressant, according to the researchers.

This specific study was made available online last December 6 in the Archives of Psychiatry. Generally speaking, the results of the said study have created doubts on the repeated claim that there are widespread cases of unrecognized bipolar disorder in the clinical practice and specifically in some major treatment-resistant disorders. This was based on the concluding statements of the researchers, led by Dr. Roy H. Perlis of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in a news release from the said journal.

The researchers added that the screening of psychiatric patients from bipolar disorder is still very important. Individual risks must also be considered such as the history of the family, and the age and onset of the disorder.