With most illnesses, patients need only to visit their doctor and then go to the drug store to pick up their medication. This is a very simple process. However, these illnesses are strictly pertaining to the body. When the patient has an illness of the mind, that's when the lines of diagnosis and treatment aren't so clearly drawn. .
The study of medicine in general has been studied for many centuries. Or as other mental problems. So, why does this happen? If medicine is so advanced in this day and time, how come there are patients out there being treated for an illness they don't have and left untreated for an illness they do? For some, it's because the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder aren't cut and dry. Also, misdiagnosis occurs because the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder overlap that of other illnesses. Of course, it's not all the fault of the medicine. Patients have a duty to their doctor to completely explain all of their symptoms, so that the doctor can make a correct diagnosis with the information given.
In order to understand why bipolar disorder is misdiagnosed, you have to know what it is and what causes it. According to Francis Mark Mondimore, M.D., bipolar disorder consists of "periods of severe depression as well as periods of mania" (8). Meaning that bipolar disorder is actually two illnesses in one. This explains why "the older name for the disorder: [is] manic-depressive illness"(Mondimore 8). That is one reason why bipolar disorder is hard to diagnose. It wasn't seen as an actual disorder "caused by a defect in the brain's regulation of mood" (Mondimore 6), but rather an illness that just came upon a person. So, bipolar disorder is actually something that the person is born with, all it needs to surface is an event to bring it out. The difference between manic-depressive illness and bipolar disorder is comparable to the common cold and allergies. The former is a condition that happens every now and then, but runs it's course and is gone.