Mania And Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar Affective Disorder can be traced back throughout history. The early history of mental disorders, including bipolar disorder was shrouded by a cloud of fear, ignorance and misunderstanding.
Both melancholy, the older term used for depression and mania have their origin in Ancient Greek. Melancholy emerges from the Greek words 'melas' symbolizing black and 'chole' meaning bile as Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine himself thought that depression emerged from a surplus of black bile. Mania is derived from 'menos' for life-force and 'mainesthai' - the term used to describe rage and madness.
Aretaeus of Cappadocia, an illustrated Greek Physician during the early century, examined and scrutinized the relationship between mania and melancholia in the evolution of bipolar disorder. In his work, 'On Aetiology and Symptomatology of Chronic Illnesses', he indicated that both patterns of mood are a consequence of a similar disorder. This connection, however failed to gain notice until much later.
In 1621, an English clergyman and scholar by the name of Robert Burton published a book - The Anatomy of Melancholy containing a review of depression, its causes, symptoms and cures. Building on the views of Hippocrates, Burton believed melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile, among other theories. He also listed poor diet, fear, supernatural causes, old age and temperament as probable causes. The point to take away from Burton's work is that melancholia was described as a mental illness in its own right.
Théophile Bonet, a Swiss physician in 1686 became one of the first to connect mania and depression as 'manico-melancolicus'.
In the 1800's Falret and Baillarger, two prominent French physicians studied and described symptoms an...

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...ls with loss and separation of the primary object in its life - the mother, even if only temporarily. The feelings of sadness and depression remain and the child learns to tolerate these feelings or copes through manic defences. Klein saw the depressive position as the primary point of manic-depressive states and introduced the alliance between the depressive position and manic depressive states.
In the 1970's Brumback, Weinberg et al. derived and adapted adult criteria to juvenile cases in order to diagnose mania and depression in children, which provided a basis of criteria for bipolar disorder to be published in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) III in 1980.
Since the 1980's however, it has been professed that adult criteria can be used to diagnose children, giving allowances for age differences and developmental stage of the child.