Mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) reduces depression-related self-referential processing in patients with bipolar disorder: an exploratory task-based study.

Negative self-referential processing has fruitfully been studied in unipolar depressed patients, but remarkably less in patients with bipolar disorder (BD). This exploratory study examines the relation between task-based self-referential processing and depressive symptoms in BD and their possible importance to the working mechanism of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) for BD. The study population consisted of a subsample of patients with BD ( = 49) participating in an RCT of MBCT for BD, who were assigned to MBCT + TAU ( = 23) or treatment as usual (TAU) ( = 26).