[Norman Swan]
Bipolar disorder is one of the most misunderstood and least well recognised of all mental illnesses.
It comes in various forms. But basically it's a cycling between deep and dark depression
and elated moods, which can extend to flamboyance and frankly delusional behaviour.
Now, there is a belief that bipolar disorder is linked to being gifted, either in a creative
sense or intellectual. And there have been many examples through history of famous people
with bipolar disorder. British comedian Stephen Fry, for instance, has made no secret of it.
Nor did the late Spike Milligan.
[Nic Newling]
I got the diagnosis of bipolar disorder when I was about seventeen. I started getting really
anxious. I started worrying about all these things in the world which I shouldn't really
need to worry about. I would say the features that people might notice in someone who may
have bipolar disorder. Their behaviour will swing wildly from being elated, overjoyed,
energetic, electrified right to the opposite end of locking themselves in their room, not
talking to anyone, not participating in life, I guess you'd say, to throw in a bit of a cliche.
[Norman Swan]
Can you describe a high to me?
[Nic Newling]
It's almost as -- if I don't see the world differently, the world actually changes.
Things just seem amazing and beautiful. It's like there's no -- all those problems that I'd have in
the past, that I'd think about how horrible the world is, would drift away and everything
would be the complete opposite of that. And being in -- being within that experience -- meant
that I was untouchable, I was unstoppable, nothing could hold me back. I couldn't fail.
If I tried anything I would succeed.
[Norman Swan]
So how does your creativity express itself?
[Nic Newling]
My creativity expands into many different fields. And it's changed over time. I used
to do a lot of drawing when I was a kid, some writing... I am really into acting. I went
to a couple of drama schools, and I love being on stage. I'd have a huge spike of creativity
which was amazingly productive -- throw everything into some sort of script or production and
have it exactly the way I'd want it, within a couple of hours, and then afterwards realise,
oh, it's shit and just throw it in the bin. Or just not be able to continue with it. Getting on medication
and realising that I can't just stay up for two days drawing things and writing things,
I have to have some sort of balance in my life, now -- there was an adjustment period
there, where it took some getting used to, that shifting of gears, I suppose.
But now that it's been a long time since I've been stable, I've become accustomed to that
change. Where now I can be productive, I can be incredibly productive, and creative, and
sensible and easy to live with.
[Norman Swan]
The question is, is this link between bipolar disorder and being gifted either in a creative
sense or intellectual real or not? That's what Doctor James McCabe, of the Institute
of Psychiatry in London, has been investigating.
[James McCabe]
This idea goes right back to the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle wrote about the association between
giftedness and what he would have called madness, I guess. And there have been many examples
of people throughout history who seem to have a kind of instability in their mood and who
are also very bright or very creative. So examples would be some of the great composers
like Beethoven. I've been very struck during my clinical work as a psychiatrist by how
many people I meet who've got bipolar disorder who have apparently very high functioning,
so often you meet people who are very successful business people, successful artists, musicians
and people like that.
So I wanted to really test whether that was true at the population level in a really rigorous
scientific way.
[Norman Swan]
So James McCabe compared the school results of a million Swedish high school students
with their chances of subsequently being hospitalised for bipolar disorder
[James McCabe]
What we found was that people who scored the highest in their school grades at age sixteen
were about four times as likely to develop bipolar disorder as an adult as people who
had average grades. And when I say with high grades, I mean people who are in the top two
to three per cent of the population. So these are the very outstanding students. These are
straight A type students.
[Norman Swan]
So these are the ones that are going to get into medicine or law, or the Swedish equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge?
[James McCabe]
Exactly.
[Norman Swan]
Was there a bias towards certain subjects -- that they were good at certain subjects
and not others?
[James McCabe]
There was, yes. We looked at the subjects individually, and what we found there was
that in general it tended to be the more artistic or the humanities that tended to be associated
with high performance, or where high performance was associated with bipolar disorder. It was
less so for some of the mathematical and technical subjects.
[Norman Swan]
But you also found a relationship with those with the lowest scores...
[James McCabe]
We did find a smaller relationship with those with the lowest scores, so if you scored very
poorly, you were also at an increased risk of bipolar disorder compared to the average
people. So actually the best place to be was average.
[Norman Swan]
So what could be the reason here? Is it genetic? Or is it the environment in which high performance
children grow up?
[James McCabe]
Those are two possibilities which could both be true. Bipolar disorder is a strongly
genetic disorder, and we know that genetic risk is about eighty per cent, so it's about
eighty per cent genetic and about twenty per cent environmental.
[Norman Swan]
What do you think of this research, which shows that people with bipolar disorder seemed
to be more creative and higher performing at school?
[Nic Newling]
I think the findings can certainly be true for some people, but not all of them. I think
at times I was hugely creative and hugely high performing, and at other times not.
Completely the opposite, at times. I think if you look at the lifespan of someone or just the period
of time that's someone's in school, it can really go either way. When I was coming into
school I had a scholarship to go to the high school, I was already really high performing,
and really creative. After that point, within the first year, it took a huge nosedive and
throughout the rest of my schooling life I wasn't highly performing -- and sometimes creative.
But now I'm both.