[Premorbid phase of bipolar disorder].

The study of the premorbid functioning in bipolar disorder allows us to identify several risk factors of the disease. First we will present retrospective studies of adults or teenagers presenting a bipolar disorder and second the studies concerning offspring of parents with bipolar disorder. Despite contradictory results and methodological weaknesses, these studies indicate that anxious disorders and childhood disruptive behaviour disorders may be useful markers of risk for adult bipolar disorder. All these results may open up several interesting perspectives for the prevention ant the treatment of bipolar disorder. Copyright (c) 2010 L'Encéphale. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.. All rights reserved.