[ABSTRACT] Life events can influence the onset of psychopatology. In the mood disorders field, the research on the psychosocial, genetic and biological aspects, have raised a great interest in the last years, and there are many published works. Our work will carry out a bibliographical review of those which investigate on the relationship between life events and bipolar disorder. This revision will embrace the last 20 years. We will comment the characteristics of the works, the research lines th