Early detection of schizophrenia may lead to not developing the disease or mitigation of symptoms.   See: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/20/356640026/halting-schizophrenia-before-it-starts?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2044

What an intriguing thought! If an illness, that is much more severe than bipolar d/o, may be prevented by not letting the first psychotic break happen, then can bipolar disorder be attenuated or obliterated by early detection? There are no studies of this sort, and anyway, how can you say what would have happened if… or what wouldn’t have happened if… But if this can be done, it would be amazing for people with bipolar d/o genes. Bipolar is incompletely penetrant, this means that not all people who carry the genes that have been associated with bipolar disorder, actually get the disease. See: http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/07/15/hmg.ddu335.full

Perhaps, the incomplete penetrance of bipolar disorder is due to it having been caught early and stopped from developing fully into a disease. Just a thought.