Brief explanation on bipolar manic-depressive disorder
Taken from Overcoming Depression (The Definitive Resource for Patients and Families who live with Depression and Manic-Depression) by Demitri Papolos, MD and Janice Papolos, 3-4.
Mood disorders are the "common cold" of major psychiatric illnesses. Those who have manic-depression will veer from periods of superactivity, manic elation, and grandiose schemes to feeling of despondency, immobility, guilt, and inability to experience pleasure or even think normally. These people who experience these highs and lows have what psychiatrists now call bipolar disorder. Those who suffer recurrent sever depression without the highs are said to have unipolar or nonbipolar major depression. The psychiatric profession groups these mood disturbances under the rubric major affective disorders. At first glance the term "affective" doesn't send the mind traveling, but it's a word philosophers and psychologists have traditionally used for emotion or one's "spirits."
Whatever these disorders are called---affective, manic-depressive illness, recurrent mood disorders, unipolar or bipolar depression---they've been affecting humankind throughout the centuries. Some very familiar individuals figure among the victims: King Saul of the Bible (who needed David's music to soothe his despondendy), Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt. The writers and poets Johann Goethe, Honore de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton suffered mood swings, as did composers George Frederick Handel, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Hector Berlioz, and Gustav Mahler. These people are well known and respected, so it may be that the illness fuels a certain drive and creativity. However, a study of their lives would also reveal searing anguish, shattered relationships, psychosis, and even suicide.
(To be continued)
Mood disorders are the "common cold" of major psychiatric illnesses. Those who have manic-depression will veer from periods of superactivity, manic elation, and grandiose schemes to feeling of despondency, immobility, guilt, and inability to experience pleasure or even think normally. These people who experience these highs and lows have what psychiatrists now call bipolar disorder. Those who suffer recurrent sever depression without the highs are said to have unipolar or nonbipolar major depression. The psychiatric profession groups these mood disturbances under the rubric major affective disorders. At first glance the term "affective" doesn't send the mind traveling, but it's a word philosophers and psychologists have traditionally used for emotion or one's "spirits."
Whatever these disorders are called---affective, manic-depressive illness, recurrent mood disorders, unipolar or bipolar depression---they've been affecting humankind throughout the centuries. Some very familiar individuals figure among the victims: King Saul of the Bible (who needed David's music to soothe his despondendy), Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt. The writers and poets Johann Goethe, Honore de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton suffered mood swings, as did composers George Frederick Handel, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Hector Berlioz, and Gustav Mahler. These people are well known and respected, so it may be that the illness fuels a certain drive and creativity. However, a study of their lives would also reveal searing anguish, shattered relationships, psychosis, and even suicide.
(To be continued)
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