Bipolar disorder, still often referred to colloquially as manic depression, is a mood disorder marked by episodes of clinically significant impairment due to mania or depression.
Bipolar disorder is a serious medical illness that affects millions of people. Bipolar disorder typically develops in early adulthood, but some people develop symptoms as children or late in life. It is often not recognized as an illness, and people may suffer for years before it is properly diagnosed and treated. Like heart disease and diabetes, Bipolar disorder is a long-term illness that must be carefully managed throughout a person's life.
One sufferer of Bipolar disorder wrote: "Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide. "I am fortunate that I have not died from my illness, fortunate in having received the best medical care available, and fortunate of having the friends, colleagues, and family that I do.
Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), a German psychiatrist who first described the illness and coined the term "manic depression", noted in his original delineation of the disease that intervals of acute illness, manic or depressive, were generally punctuated by relatively symptom-free intervals in which a patient was able to function normally.
To that point, there are currently three types of bipolar disorder outlined by the DSM-IV-TR and generally accepted within the medical community: Bipolar I, Bipolar II, and Cyclothymia. Like many disorders involving brain chemistry, bipolar disorder is still under investigation, and symptoms may differ significantly from person to person............
