Bipolar disorder is not actually a new condition – it has long been known but only was termed as such in more recent years.

If you trace a history of the illness back to ancient Greece you will definitely find some records of it. 2000 years ago ancient Greeks even were able to identify and differentiate such opposite sides of mood as melancholia, or in other words, depression and mania.

But the assumption that these two mood extremes can be somehow connected and represent sides of one illness belongs to a famous Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia. Right as it was his theory stayed just a theory for quite a long period of time.

It was not until the 18^th century that a mental treatment got a different direction and the whole concept of mental illnesses was reviewed. The healing methods became more compassionate and more time was spent in observation and research; also all the investigations and observation results were documented. This was the time when the connection between the depressive and maniac periods in some patients was noticed again and paid proper attention.

In the 1850’s the condition was called a “folie circulaire” by the French psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Falret. He noticed that the illness had a circular character and therefore named it likewise. The term is translated from French as ‘circular insanity’.

Another Frenchman, the neurologist Jules Baillarger assumed that those extremes in mood represented different phases of the same disease. He called it ‘dual-form insanity’.

But the final term as we use it now – ‘bipolar disorder’ – was introduced by the German psychiatrist Karl Kleist, in 1953. Before him Emil Kraepelin in 1899 was the first to use the term ‘manic depressive illness’ in order to define depressive and maniac periods together as one condition.