Grant: Project Grant

More than half a million Canadians live with bipolar disorder (BD), a long-term and potentially disabling mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings from depression to mania. Suicide rates are disturbingly high - up to 15% of people with BD will end their own lives. This evidence paints a bleak picture. Yet, with optimal support, care and empowerment, people with BD can flourish, and make important and creative contributions to society. Our research network - the Collaborative RESearch Team to study psychosocial issues in BD (CREST.BD) - uses a pioneering participatory approach in which researchers, healthcare providers and, critically, people who live with BD work collectively to conduct BD research, and to move research results into action. CREST.BD has recently produced two flagship websites designed for people with BD and their healthcare providers: a 'Quality of Life Tool' and a state-of-the-art 'Bipolar Wellness Centre.' In this project, we will build on our prior work to develop a new mobile app called Bipolar Bridges. The app will addresses some of the most pressing real-world problems that people with BD currently face when using online technologies. First, it will take advantage of advances in online technologies to provide a secure and safe interface where the user is in control of their own health data. Second, it will empower the user to combine and learn from different forms of online self-management or self-care data (for example, medication use, sleep quality, mood variability, activity levels) in one place. Third, it will be co-designed with diverse (for example, people with different gender identities, or of different ethnic or cultural backgrounds) people with bipolar disorder. At the same time, Bipolar Bridges will provide a new way for researchers to assess the relationship between self-management and quality of life outcomes in diverse people with BD.