Abstract
A total of 74 manic or hypomanic episodes were scrutinized in 31 probands (18 women and 13 men), followed over the years by the author on an outpatient basis. These turned out to herald bipolar affective illness in some 70 percent of males and almost 40% of females. Unipolar mania occurred twice as often in men, as it did in women (38,4% vs. 22,2%). Men tended to be younger (only 30% aged 45 or older), than women (almost a half in the menopausal age bracket).
One third of all female probands (and over 46% of those under age 45) manifested their manic episodes in connection with childbirth (gestational mania). As a paradoxical, acute grief reaction (“funeral mania”), the syndrome under scrutiny, occurred in about 1/7 of the men, and more than 1/4 of the women. Significant medico-surgical problems were found to accompany or precede female mania twice as often, compared to male cases (61,1% vs. 30,7%); and clinical confusion or other indices of “organicity” were present in 2/3 of the women, and less than a half (46,1%) of the men.
Over half the male probands demonstrated either an inverted sexual attraction, or hypogonadism; and four out of 13 males were aged 45 or older. The above findings are tentatively related to gender differential in cerebral hemispheric specialization.