Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Bipolar disorder in historical perspective
- 2 The bipolar spectrum
- 3 Defining and measuring Bipolar II Disorder
- 4 Bipolar II Disorder in context: epidemiology, disability and economic burden
- 5 Is Bipolar II Disorder increasing in prevalence?
- 6 The neurobiology of Bipolar II Disorder
- 7 The role of antidepressants in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 8 The use of SSRIs as mood stabilisers for Bipolar II Disorder
- 9 Mood stabilisers in the treatment of Bipolar II Disorder
- 10 The use of atypical antipsychotic drugs in Bipolar II Disorder
- 11 The role of fish oil in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 12 The role of psychological interventions in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 13 The role of wellbeing plans in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 14 Survival strategies for managing and prospering with Bipolar II Disorder
- 15 A clinical model for managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 16 Management commentary
- 17 Management commentary
- 18 Management commentary
- 19 Management commentary
- 20 Management commentary
- 21 Management commentary
- 22 Management commentary
- 23 Management commentary
- 24 Management commentary
- 25 Management commentary
- 26 Management commentary: What would Hippocrates do?
- 27 Management commentary
- 28 Rounding up and tying down
- Appendix 1 Black Dog Institute Self-test for Bipolar Disorder: The Mood Swings Questionnaire
- Index
- References
1 - Bipolar disorder in historical perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2009
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Bipolar disorder in historical perspective
- 2 The bipolar spectrum
- 3 Defining and measuring Bipolar II Disorder
- 4 Bipolar II Disorder in context: epidemiology, disability and economic burden
- 5 Is Bipolar II Disorder increasing in prevalence?
- 6 The neurobiology of Bipolar II Disorder
- 7 The role of antidepressants in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 8 The use of SSRIs as mood stabilisers for Bipolar II Disorder
- 9 Mood stabilisers in the treatment of Bipolar II Disorder
- 10 The use of atypical antipsychotic drugs in Bipolar II Disorder
- 11 The role of fish oil in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 12 The role of psychological interventions in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 13 The role of wellbeing plans in managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 14 Survival strategies for managing and prospering with Bipolar II Disorder
- 15 A clinical model for managing Bipolar II Disorder
- 16 Management commentary
- 17 Management commentary
- 18 Management commentary
- 19 Management commentary
- 20 Management commentary
- 21 Management commentary
- 22 Management commentary
- 23 Management commentary
- 24 Management commentary
- 25 Management commentary
- 26 Management commentary: What would Hippocrates do?
- 27 Management commentary
- 28 Rounding up and tying down
- Appendix 1 Black Dog Institute Self-test for Bipolar Disorder: The Mood Swings Questionnaire
- Index
- References
Summary
Psychiatric disorders are like children laughing and playing gaily at the park, while behind a screen other children, dimly seen, cry out to us for help. We want to come to their aid but their shapes are like shadows. Nor can we locate them.
Bipolar disorder is like one of these children. We have it before us in the pharmaceutical advertising, the woman going up and down on the merry-go-round and helped with ‘mood stabilizers’. Meanwhile, behind the screen there are other forms. Maybe a historical analysis will help us to see them more clearly.
Physicians have always known the alternation of melancholia and mania. The consistency of description across the ages gives the diagnosis a certain face validity, and it would be as idle to ask who was the first to describe their alternation as to ask who first described mumps. Aretaeus of Cappadocia, around 150 years after the birth of Christ, wrote of the succession of the two illnesses. It is clear from the context (Jackson, 1986, pp. 39–41) that he was using the two terms to describe what we today would consider mania and melancholia. Yet Aretaeus did not consider the alternation of mania and melancholia to be a separate disease.
For these remote centuries I use ‘bipolar disorder’ to mean the succession of melancholia and mania. A word of clarification: in the twentieth century, after the writings of Kleist and Leonhard, ‘bipolar disorder’ implies that there is a separate unipolar depressive disease.
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- Bipolar II DisorderModelling, Measuring and Managing, pp. 5 - 14Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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