Overdiagnosis and Underdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder

Letter to the Editor

Sir:A recent investigation by Zimmerman et al. asserting aproblem with overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder compares selfreportof previous bipolar diagnoses in 700 patients with diagnosesmade with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV(SCID). They conclude that problems with both underdiagnosisand overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder exist and suggest that thelatter may be greater than the former.

In the literature review for their article, the authors fail tocite and discuss one important previous investigation that bearson the question at hand.