Presenter: Brian Quinn, Ph.D., LCSW
CEUs: Category 1 | 6.0
Thursday, September 18, 2025 & Friday, September 19, 2025, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM - MUST ATTEND BOTH DAYS
Clinicians are seeing an increasing number of patients who, in spite of treatment with multiple antidepressants and a variety of other medications, remain mired in depression, often accompanied by irritability, anxiety, and distractibility. These individuals often lament that they “have tried every drug there is” without substantial or sustained benefit.
One reason for their predicament is that many of them are not simply depressed. At least 40 percent of them actually have unrecognized bipolar illness.
Antidepressants have been shown to be only marginally better than placebo in acute bipolar depression and have been proven ineffective in preventing future depressive episodes in those with bipolar illness. In a subset of bipolar patients, antidepressants and stimulants can cause or worsen irritable, agitated depression, increase the risk of suicide, and, paradoxically, lead to more frequent depressive episodes. Effective psychotherapy often proves to be difficult, if not impossible, when bipolar patients are misdiagnosed and inappropriately treated with antidepressants.
This seminar will provide clinicians with a four-part, clinical diagnostic method to distinguish patients with borderline personality and major depressive disorder from those with bipolar illness. Drawing on research from empirically tested individual and family therapies for bipolar disorder, Dr. Quinn will discuss the many ways psychotherapists can help patients and families struggling with bipolar disorder. Clinicians will learn to recognize bipolar patients at the greatest risk of suicide and ways to intervene to reduce this risk including information on the only medication that has been shown to dramatically reduce completed suicide. Participants will learn about potent, non-drug treatments for depression, mania, and rapid-cycling. Finally, they will learn about how mood stabilizing drugs and the newer atypical antipsychotics, when used in the absence of antidepressant medication, can both relieve acute symptoms and provide long-term stability.
Dr. Quinn weaves together the latest research findings, clinical examples, video clips, anecdotes and much more into a dynamic presentation. Lively, entertaining, and chock full of information, this seminar will help clinicians immediately become better diagnosticians and therapists.
Workshop Objectives:
At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- The four lines of clinical evidence that must be assessed to distinguish bipolar depression from unipolar depression and borderline personality
- Key elements of empirically-tested psychotherapies for bipolar illness
- How drug-free chronobiologic interventions can effectively treat depression and mania
- The only drug repeatedly shown to dramatically reduce the risk of suicide
- The four medications (mood stabilizers) shown to prevent new mood episodes in depressed and bipolar patients
- Why the new atypical antipsychotics are not mood stabilizers and should not be used in place of drugs such as lithium
Agenda:
Morning: Recognition and Differential Diagnosis
- PAIN: Four risk factors that predict suicide completion
- How to protect your patient and yourself (risk manangement 101)
- The only medication repeatedly shown to dramatically reduce suicide risk (not an antidepressant!)
- Non-Drug Treatments for Bipolar Illness
- Potent drug-free mood stabilizers: Good sleep hygiene and darkness
- Blueblockers
- Fish fat and other natural compounds
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Medications
- Antidepressants for bipolar depression
- Lithium: Still important – and still the best for many patients
- Depakote: It’s role in bipolar illness with comorbid panic and anxiety
- Tegretol: Why it’s a great, but underutilized, drug for young women
- Lamictal: Not all it’s cracked up to be
- Why atypical antipsychotics are not mood stabilizers
- Not just for MDs: Bipolar depression and suboptimal thyroid functioning
Recommended Reading:
- Cipriani, A. (2018). Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: A systematic review and network meta-analysis. Lancet, 391, 1357-1366.
- Duffy, A. (2017). The clinical trajectory of emerging bipolar disorder among the high-risk offspring of bipolar parents: current understanding and future considerations. International Journal of Bipolar Disorders, 5 (37).
- Etain,B., et al. (2012) Clinical expression of bipolar disorder type I as a function of age and polarity of onset: convergent findings in samples from France and the United States. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 73, e561–e566.
- Frankland, A., et al. (2015). Comparing the phenomenology of depressive episodes in bipolar I and II disorder and major depressive disorder within bipolar disorder pedigrees. Journal of Clinicial Psychiatry, 76(1), 32-38
- Ghaemi, N. (2019) Clinical Psychopharmacology: Principles and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press
- Ghaemi , S et al. (2021). Citalopram for Acute and Preventive Efficacy in Bipolar Depression (CAPE-BD): A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 82(1), 19m13136.
- Ghaemi, N and Vohringer, P. (2017). Athanasios Koukopoulos’ psychiatry: The primacy of mania and the limits of antidepressants. Current Neuropharmacology, 15(3), 402-408.
- Judd, L. et al. (2003). A prospective investigation of the natural history of the long-term weekly symptomatic status of bipolar II disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 60, 261-269.
- Kelly, T. (2017). The Art and Science of Thyroid Supplementation for the Treatment of Bipolar Depression.
- Koukopoulos A, and Sani G. (2014). DSM 5 criteria for depression with mixed features: a farewell to mixed depression. Acta Psychiatrica Scandanavia, 129(1), 4-16
- Paris, J. and Black D. (2015). Borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder: what is the difference and why does it matter? Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, 203(1), 3-7.
- Perugi, G et al. (2015). Mixed features in patients with a major depressive episode: the BRIDGE-II-MIX study. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 76(3), e351-358.
- Rhee T. et al. (2020) 20-Year Trends in the Pharmacologic Treatment of Bipolar Disorder by Psychiatrists in Outpatient Care Settings. Am J Psychiatry. 177(8):706-715.
- Sani, G. et al. (2014). Mixed depression: clinical features and predictors of its onset associated with antidepressant use. Psychother Psychosom, 83(4), 213-221.
- Woo Y. et al. (2015). A diagnosis of bipolar spectrum disorder predicts diagnostic conversion from unipolar depression to bipolar disorder: A 5-year retrospective study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 174, 83-88.
- Zhang, Y. et al. (2013). Antidepressants for bipolar disorder: A meta-analysis of randomized, double-blind, controlled trials. Neural Regeneration Research , 8(31), 2962-2974.
About the Presenter:
Brian Quinn, LCSW, Ph.D. author of Wiley Concise Guides to Mental Health: Bipolar Disorder and The Depression Sourcebook, 2nd ed., is a clinical social worker in private practice in Melville, New York. He is also a senior Employee Assistance Program clinician for Northwell Health. He specializes in working with patients with mood illnesses and substance abuse.
He earned his master's degree in social work at the University of Chicago in 1979 and his Ph.D. in clinical social work at New York University in 1994. He has a post-graduate certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He is an adjunct instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center.
Dr. Quinn has given seminars on depression and bipolar disorder at hospitals, graduate schools of social work, state societies for clinical social work, and to hundreds of clinicians in the United States through professional seminar companies such as PESI.
