Famous People with Bipolar Disorder: Is Adversity the Source of Creativity?
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios

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Defined Tag: Famous People With Bipolar.

When a natural calamity or a medical condition afflicts a human being, there is never a discrimination made between a layman and a famous personality. However, in certain cases, it may be tougher for a celebrity to come out in the open about being afflicted by a medical condition that he/she believes may adversely affect his/her career. Bipolar Disorder, a mental illness that causes an individual to experience extreme episodes of depression and hypo/mania is one such medical condition that most celebrities, who are afflicted with it, feel hesitant to speak about openly.

There have been famous people with Bipolar disorder in the past who have come out in the open about being afflicted while others believed they were suffering from manic depression, as adjudged by their behavior. Virginia Woolf, one of the most famous sufferers of manic depression admitted to her fits of moods and the source of creativity they provided for her… “my brains went up in a shower of fireworks. As an experience madness is terrific…in its lava I find most of the things I write about.” Though the writer finally succumbed to one of her moods of manic depression by committing suicide at the age of 59, she remains a figure of awe and reverence for the sheer grit with which she faced her hereditary condition of mental sickness.

Vivien Leigh, the beautiful actress, another example of the famous people with Bipolar did not show signs of manic disorder in her early age. Even though she had always suffered from insomnia, Vivien only experienced her extreme mood swings after her miscarriage on the sets of Caesar and Cleopatra. As there was no appropriate treatment available for Bipolar disorder at that time, Vivien—among other famous people with bipolar disorder--received rude shock treatments that only resulted in a further deterioration of her physical and mental health.

The list of famous people with Bipolar is unending with the famous singer Sting, actor Jean Claude Van Damme, poet/author Sylvia Plath and many more famous writers, actors, poets and politicians who either admitted to being sufferers of manic depression or were adjudged to be suffering from it. Jean Claude Van Damme admitted that his strenuous physical training was necessary as he was …“compensating for manic depressive disease with training. When I didn’t train for a couple of days, I felt so low and nothing could make me happy.”

It is difficult to ascertain whether it is the manic depression that is the creative force in the lives of famous people with Bipolar or it is their sheer grit to fight their condition that distinguishes them from an ordinary person who often lacks the strong will needed to overcome adversities.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, Amazon, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.