Very poorly studied for a long time, bipolar disorders have had many names over the centuries. Minute Doctor tells you this story today.
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Minute Doctor
Bipolar disorder is a complex mental illness that has long remained an enigma. Many doctors have tried to unravel its mysteries over the centuries.
Mania and melancholy, disorders that intrigue
Mania and melancholy are two disorders that have puzzled us for millennia. Starting with the Greeks. They describe the symptoms of mania as well, the sufferers have a “cheerful, feverless delirium characterized by agitation in action”.
Melancholics, on the other hand, feel dejected for no visible reason. If these two disorders were in fact only one disease, it is the intimate conviction of Areteus of Cappadocia, a doctor of the 1st century after Jesus Christ, trained at the famous school of Alexandria.
He writes “When the mania ceases, the melancholy begins again, so that there is passage and return from one to the other, according to certain periods”.
From manic depression to bipolar disorder
Centuries pass and Aretea of Cappadocia falls into oblivion. In the 18th century, people began to speak of depression rather than melancholy. Doctors wonder if the seasons don’t influence mood.
They start talking about circular madness or double-shaped madness. It was Emil Kraepelin, born in 1856, the same day as Freud but less famous, who spoke for the first time of manic-depressive madness.
For him, mania, depression and “mixed states” are one and the same pathology. It was not until 1980 that “bipolar disorders” were finally mentioned in the DSM III, the reference work on mental disorders of the American Psychiatric Association.
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