ABSTRACT
The writer, Ernest Hemingway, was thought to have suffered from a few diagnoses, including bipolar disorder and traumatic brain injury (Martin, 2006). While diagnostic labels change with time, it is likely that difficulties related to mood swings have been around for some time. What is now termed bipolar disorder was previously known as manic–depressive disorder. In essence, DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) divides bipolar disorders into bipolar I disorder and bipolar II disorder. Bipolar I disorder represents the occurrence of one or more manic or mixed episodes. In contrast, bipolar II disorder is defined as the occurrence of one or more major depressive episodes, plus at least one hypo-manic episode. There are several other sub-divisions within the bipolar disorder spectrum. None of these is utilized in this chapter, as almost all the (limited) research to date has failed to specify typology. Accordingly, here, the disorder will then also be conceptualized as constituting, in essence, a cyclical fluctuation between episodes of depression and mania in a person. It is acknowledged, though, that in reality this is a much more 178complex mental disorder than portrayed by this simplistic definition.
