Objective To explore the coping style of patients with depression and bipolar disor-der，and the association between bipolar disorder and coping style. Methods The study was designed as a cross-sectional case-control study. 144 patients with bipolar disorder，189 patients with recurrent depressionand 123 healthy controls were enrolled. Trait Coping Styles Questionnaire (TCSQ) was used to evaluate the coping style of all participants. Results Compared to control group，patients in both bipolar disorder group and recur-rent depression group scored significantly differentially in terms of coping style (P＜0.01). The score of positive coping style was significantly higher in bipolar disorder group than depression group (P＜0.01). In bipolar dis-order group and recurrent depression group，patients in non-remission period showed higher negative copingstyle score and lower positive coping style score than those in remission period. In Logistic analysis，while con-trolled the effect of age and disease status，positive coping style was a risk factor of bipolar disorder (OR=1.064，95%CI=1.026-1.102). The predictive rate of logistic regression equation was 64.3%. Conclusions Compared with recurrent depression，patients with bipolar disorder might use relatively positive coping style. The patients with depressive episode who use relatively positive coping style are more likely to develop bipolar disorder.