Bipolar Affective Disorder

  • Also called manic-depression
  • It is a disturbance of your mood both and is characterized by cycles of depression and also those of obsession
  • People affected with this disorder can encounter mood changes that can occur gradually and also occasionally with speed
  • When in the depressed cycle the person can go through some or all of the symptoms of depression
  • 3 different stages of bipolar affective disorder 1. Extremely elevated mood (Mania) 2. Very low mood (depression) and 3. Normal Mood
  • There are a number of forms of bipolar disorder depending on difficulty and length of the disorder

Causes

  • Some researchers believe that this disorder is caused from a result of abnormalities in the way some nerve cells in the brain work or communicate
  • Researchers also believe that it can be caused from the genes ex. If your parent or full sibling has it i.e.

History of Bipolar Affective Disorder

  • One of the oldest known illnesses
  • It was first noticed in the 2nd century by Aretaeus from ancient turkey.
  • He was the first to recognize some symptoms of mania and depression and felt they could be linked together
  • His findings went unnoticed until the 1650’s when a man named Richard Burton wrote a book which focused specifically on depression
  • The findings are still used today and many call him the father of recognizing depression as a mental illness
  • Jules Falret established a link between depression and suicide and his work led to the term bipolar disorder and was able to find a distinction between depression moments and heightened moods
  • This man recognized it to be different than normal depression and recorded his findings as Manic-Depressive Psychosis
  • Bipolar Disorder received it’s own classification from other mental disorders because of Francois Baillarger
  • 1913 Emil Krapelin established the term manic depressive and did an intense study around the effects of depression and a bit about the manic state.
  • Within 15 years this approach to mental illness was fully accepted and became the prevailing theory of the 1930’s
  • An article in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorder analyzing the genetics in the disease and figuring out that manic depression ran in the families already stricken with the disease
  • Throughout most of the 1960’s many people with this disease were put into an institute and given little financial help because the congress refusal to recognize this as a legitimate illness
  • In the early 1970’s laws were enforced and standards established to help those afflicted and in 1979 the National Association of Mental Health was established
  • 1980 term bipolar replaced the term manic depression as a diagnostic term
  • in the 1980`s research was able to determine between adult and child bipolar disorder
  • Today studies are still being made to find the probable methods to treat the method and the probable causes

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