Although informative at the population level, epidemiologic and other community studies may be limited in generalizability to the clinical setting. Yet within clinical samples, there is limited research focused on CUD comorbidity in BD. Among the few published studies within patient populations, results support associations between CUD comorbidity and male sex [17,22] and increased incidence of psychosis [17,22]. However, these studies have relied upon primarily manic [17] or mixed euthymic and symptomatic [22] samples, thus limiting an ability to evaluate features that may be more relevant to acute bipolar depression, in particular. Building upon this growing literature, the aim of this exploratory study was to further advance an understanding of CUD comorbidity in BD, utilizing a sample of acutely ill patients with bipolar I disorder (BDI) presenting for psychiatric hospitalization. Use of this sample allowed for the evaluation of demographic and clinical correlates of CUD diagnosis within the context of routine clinical care, and across the full spectrum of BD mood symptomatology (i.e., current manic and depressive symptomatology).
