In the days of the Roman Empire, after a military victory the Emperor would process in triumph before the excited and grateful crowds. The sun honored him from on high with the brightest of its rays, laurels wreathed his head, the centurions saluted him as a great leader, the plebeians venerated him, life smiled upon him, and the greatest glory was no more than a first step in his triumphal ascension to Deity. Behind him, part of his mighty retinue, walked the man. The man's job was to repeat systematically to the Emperor: “Remember you are not divine, remember you are human, remember you have to die. ”

This figure, real and fully documented by historians, perfectly illustrates the work of psychoeducation therapists: giving patients the information they need so they know where they are and can decide where to go.

When we started organizing psychoeducation groups for bipolar patients, very little information was available about this approach and there were no randomized trials with any degree of methodological rigor and no specific manual – so we had to draw on our knowledge of bipolar disorder and our own common sense. After some time had passed, a number of reviews and manuals started coming out, and we began to contact the pioneering researchers in this field. We were happy to see that almost all the teams, whether in the USA, Great Britain, The Netherlands, or Italy, were working toward the same goal, using similar techniques and looking at the same themes. In fact we came to similar conclusions.