Questions in Psychiatry (QuiP): Is staging bipolar disorder possible? If so, where to begin?

Summary The prospect of staging psychiatric disorders has been a source of ongoing controversy since the idea was first proposed in the early 1990s, based on the staging models used for cancer. More recently, several staging models have been proposed for bipolar disorder; however, as yet there is no consensus as to which model (or composite) is best, and there is no substantive evidence in support of any one of the models. The fundamental...