History of bipolar disorder

What can we learn from the history of bipolar disorder?

The documented history of bipolar disorder can be traced to the Ancient Greeks.


History of Bipolar Disorder in Ancient Greece and Rome


Bipolar in the Middle Ages


The history of bipolar disorder is also documented through the writings of Chinese scholar Gao Lian.


This bp Magazine article does a great job of concisely presenting how understandings of the disease have evolved, resulting in the modern classifications of the DSM. It is the best lay overview of bipolar's conceptual history that I can suggest. 

Bipolar in Modern History


In January, 1854, at an address to the French Imperial Academy of Medicine, Jules Baillarger, a French psychiatrist and neurologist, described a condition which caused recurrent cycles of mania and depression. He named this disorder "dual-form insanity."

Less than a month later, Jean-Pierre Falret, another French psychiatrist, described to the Academy a disorder he called "circular insanity."

German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin plays an key role in the history of bipolar disorder.

However, the "father" of much of our current understanding of bipolar disorder comes from the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Kraepelin studied and categorized the natural manic and depressive cycles of bipolar patients. After noticing that an acute manic or depressive period was followed by a symptom-free period, he coined the term "manic-depressive psychosis."

Apart from being such a successful exercise in "branding", Kraeplin's theory incorporated many notions that have been enduring:

1. Bipolar is a disease with a recognizable pattern of symptoms, even though any single symptom may be present in other psychiatric disorders.



In the 1950s another German psychiatrist, Karl Leonhard, coined the term "bipolar" along with "unipolar" to distinguish between folks who have both mania and depression, versus depression only.


This is actually a spectrum of mood disorders with Bipolar 1 at one end and depression at the other. Thus, one can be only slightly bipolar and lie outside the definitions in the DSM but still suffer and need treatment. This kind of sub-clinical bipolar is sometimes known as soft bipolar.


The history of bipolar disorder has evolved so that we now include a comprehensive mood spectrum.

Of course, there is so much more to explore: 

1. History of diagnostic criteria

2. History of bipolar treatments

3. History of bipolar medications

4. History of cultural understandings of bipolar

. . . and so forth.

Two excellent resources are:


These are both cultural and social histories of the evolution from early conceptions of manic depression to today's "bipolar". These are wonderful books and provide a much fuller history of bipolar disorder than a single webpage can offer.

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