Differences Between Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder (2)

Professor Jeffrey Lieberman discusses some of the symptomatic differences between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Well, back in the old days, in the 1900s and the 1800s, there wasn't schizophrenia, there wasn't manic depressive illness, there was only insanity. People that were 'deranged,' 'ran amok,' 'crazy,' were called generally 'insane.' And this grouped in a bunch of different disorders including schizophrenia and manic depressive illness or bipolar disorder. In the late nineteenth century, a German psychiatrist named Emile Kraepelin, by watching people when they first got sick over many years, was first able to distinguish two groups from this broad group of people with insanity. One were people that got disturbed, had symptoms, their behavior became all confused and agitated but then they got better. The other was a group that got sick and even when they quieted down they didn't seem to get fully better. They seemed to, after being sick, deteriorate over time. Schizophrenia and manic depressive illness differ principally in that the major symptoms within schizophrenia are symptoms of thinking and cognition. Meaning that your thoughts are bizarre, unreal, don't make sense, illogical, and you have perceptions of things that aren't really there. You hear voices, you see things, you feel things when there is no stimulation. Manic depressive illness, bipolar disorder, the major symptoms are disturbances of mood. Your mood is wildly elated, happy, euphoric, excited, for no reason or beyond all proportion to your circumstances. Or it is profoundly depressed and you're sad no matter what happens. You could win the lottery and it doesn't stir you from your sadness. So this is the major difference between the two disorders.