HCA/240
Toni Black
Andrew Bertrand
11/21/2010
What is Bipolar Disorder? Bipolar disorder, is also known as manic-depressive illness, this is a brain disorder that causes unusual mood swings, energy levels are either up or down and your ability to function a normal everyday life would be a challenge to these individuals with this mental illness. The normal ups and downs that people experience who doesn’t have bipolar disorder is relatively different because with bipolar disorder it is more severe, it can result in loss of jobs, poor school performance, and even thoughts of suicide.
History of Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar disorder is one of the oldest known mental illnesses. Some researchers have revealed the symptoms in early medical records as far back as the second century. The findings went unnoticed until 1650. A scientist by the name of Richard Burton wrote a book “The Anatomy of Melancholia”, this book focused mostly on depression, his findings are and still used to this day in the mental illness field. Richard Burton is being called the father of depression as a mental illness. Jules Falret in 1854 became the doctor who connected the two depressions and suicide. This led him to the term bipolar disorder he was able to find similarities between the moments of depression and the mood swings. This was recognized to be different from just depression, and in 1875 what he recorded was the term Manic-Depressive Psychosis, a psychiatric disorder. Another fact that Falret found that the disease may be found in certain families and with this finding there was a genetic link to this mental illness. Francois Baillarger assumed there was a significant difference between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Baillarger described the depressive phase of the disease. With his findings that allowed bipolar disorder to get its own classification separating it from other mental disorders during that time. Emil Krapelin came up with