Bipolar disorder is not what it used to be.

And if your practice is in need of a makeover, tune in.

Welcome to the Carlet Psychiatry Podcast, keeping psychiatry honest since 2003.

I'm Chris Aiken, the editor-in-chief of the Carlatte Psychiatry Report.

And I'm Kelly Newsom, a psychiatric MP, and a dedicated reader of every issue.

Last month, we went to the International Society of Bipolar Disorders Conference in Chicago.

That's right, Chicago.

It was the first time the group has met in person since the pandemic.

We even got to meet a few of our podcast listeners there,

which was certainly one of the highlights.

This conference is different from most other site conferences in at least one way.

Patients are invited in and valued for their wisdom of their lived experience,

and patients presented at many of the talks, along with an eclectic mix of researchers,

clinicians, and psychotherapists.

Topics ran the gamut from organoids, a new technology that uses pluripotent stem cells to study the pathophysiology of disease and discover new treatments,

all the way to transcranial infrared laser stimulation, a low-dose laser therapy that is used in wound healing and was repurposed there in a small

study to boost cognition in bipolar disorder. There was even a paper that used the Roarshark,

a.k.a. the inkblot test to distinguish bipolar disorder from unipolar disorder, surprisingly, with some success there.

But that is not what this podcast is about.

We're going to look at the big picture.

Researchers are talking about ideas that weren't even on the table when many of us

completed our training, probiotics, dark therapy,

...