The pioneering academic proponent of a link between bipolar disorder and artistic accomplishment is psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD, co-director of the Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins University. вЂњBut as a group, are more likely to be creative.вЂќ вЂњMost people with bipolar disorder are not more creative than the average person,вЂќ Kyaga notes.

The conclusion: Individuals who had studied one of the creative arts in high school or college had higher odds of developing bipolar or another serious mental health disorder. They found that individuals with bipolar disorder-and importantly, undiagnosed relatives of individuals with either bipolar or schizophrenia-are significantly overrepresented in the arts and sciences.ДЄn even larger population analysis, published in 2018, looked at the question from the other way around. In one study significant for its size and scope, Kyaga and colleagues analyzed data from 300,000 patients hospitalized with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and unipolar depression between 19. Kyaga, who is based at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, has published large-scale investigations into a possible link between having a psychiatric diagnosis and entering the creative professions.

вЂњIn my mind, at this stage, there is an unquestionable association between bipolar disorder and creativity,вЂќ says Simon Kyaga, MD, PhD. Yet researchers still wrestle with why-and even whether-people with bipolar and other mental health disorders are likely to be more creative than average.

Since Aristotle, great thinkers have wondered about the connection between brain-based disorders and great works of art or groundbreaking insights. Vincent Van GoghвЂ™s feverish visions of starry nights, the intense vulnerability of a Judy Garland performance, the originality of Robert LowellвЂ™s confessional poetry-thereвЂ™s a long list of immensely talented but troubled souls who have been diagnosed with a mood disorder in their lifetimes or in retrospect. In a letter to a friend in 1930, she wrote of her вЂњmadnessвЂќ that вЂњin its lava, I still find most of the things I write about.вЂќ Recent research is yielding insights into the connections between bipolar and creativity-and not just artistic accomplishment, but also innovative thinking and entrepreneurship.ДЄuthor Virginia Woolf saw her artistry and her mood extremes as being inextricably linked.

Bipolar hyperfocus