Exploring resilience and adaptive traits in mood disorders

Mood disorders, particularly bipolar disorders, are traditionally conceptualized through a lens focused on pathology and dysfunction. Recent advances in neuroimaging, digital phenotyping, psychotherapeutic models, and social rhythm-based interventions offer promising avenues to reframe bipolar and mood disorders not solely as clinical burdens, but as complex biopsychosocial phenomena shaped by context, personality, and neurodiversity. This Research Topic aims to explore not only how individuals with mood disorders experience and recover from mood episodes, but importantly also explores factors associated with longer term resilience and adaptive traits in depression and bipolar disorders.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions across the full spectrum of mood disorders, with a focus on resilience and adaptive responses. We welcome manuscripts addressing neurobiological, psychological, social, and phenomenological dimensions of bipolar and related mood disorders. Particular interest will be given to works that explore compensatory mechanisms, adaptive traits, and trajectories of resilience or recovery.

We encourage original research, systematic reviews, theoretical papers and clinical trials that challenge traditional models and offer novel insights into the nature of resilience in mood disorders. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Neuroimaging and neurophysiological correlates of adaptive functioning in bipolar disorders
- Digital psychiatry and real-time monitoring of affective variability
- Resilience models and protective psychosocial factors
- Cognitive strengths, creativity, and goal-oriented behavior in mood disorders
- Longitudinal and life course approaches to mood disorders
- Clinical, theoretical, or narrative perspectives on post-crisis growth