When bipolar was still called manic depression: Getting sick in the era of the DSM-II

This article is a first-person account of what it was like to be bipolar in the late 1970s, in the final days of the DSM-II. The field was on the verge of transitioning from psychodynamic psychiatry to biological psychiatry. During this period, nosology and etiology were confounded, and there was little diagnostic agreement across practitioners. Psychiatric admissions often lasted 6 months or more. Available treatments and conditions were sometimes harsh and iatrogenic: being housed with lobotomized people, rodent-infested municipal hospitals, prolonged periods in restraints and solitary confinement, cold wet sheets, high doses of neuroleptics or the withholding of medication, inadequate access to medication upon discharge, and even sexual misconduct by clinicians. This is also an account of resilience, the life-saving benefit of good treatment. It stresses the need to treat the persons trapped within the disease and to help clients become an active agent in their own recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).