Intelligence, creativity and bipolar disorder may share underlying genetics
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
In a similar line of thinking, there's a book called "A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness" that was a fascinating read. The gist of the book is that our best leaders' mental illnesses had something to do with them being great. Abraham Lincoln for example, suffered from depression. This fact may have given him special insight into the suffering of others -- a kind of empathy. This empathy was invaluable, says the author, to the decisions he made.
Anyway, yeah. I like this idea. Maybe suffering from mental illness isn't ALL bad. Maybe it has some valuable upsides.
Careful with statements like that. I've pondered quite a bit about this. Of course I too would like to think that such suffering isn't entirely pointless. But mental illness can be so incredibly devastating, no amount of gained wisdom will compensate for that. Especially if self-harm or suicide is involved, it's even harder to see any potential upsides.
There is a grain of truth to this but I think this article implies causation when it's merely a correlation.
My own view is that some people are acutely sensitive to everything that happens around them. Even minor things like unexpected rain on the way to work can turn into an epiphany or a minor tragedy depending on your mood. You're constantly ruminating and over analyzing everything and so its possible that you're good at translating feelings into words.
It gels with my personal experience.
Even a correlation is very interesting!
In fact I tend to disagree, I don't think anyone is proposing that the causation must be direct, because there are still intelligent people who are not bipolar or depressive and there are bipolar and depressed people who are not intelligent. But the correlation, which I think everybody assuming is some third factor behind the mental illness and intelligence/creativity, is still interesting.
... of course, it's an interesting correlation in a sea of interesting correlations, and it's hard to tell which of them are genuinely interesting and which are just "throw enough variables together and you'll get all sorts of spurious correlations". But I'd submit that this is an unusally strong signal, as evidenced by the fact that humans have been making this observation for centuries now. Even if it is spurious, I suspect the proof of that would itself have something interesting in it.
Therefore I'll keep it short.
I'm cyclothymic (like mild bipolar), anxious far more often than not, and creating is the only thing which does anything for me, and even then, it doesn't do much.
I have the fortune of knowing a fair bit about my neurochemistry, having sequenced my genome and spent more time than is healthy in SNPedia, and my dopamine and serotonin systems are all kinds of screwed - low output, low uptake. My oxycontin system is amped up to the point that I should be schizophrenic. Perhaps I am.
Either way, the upshot is that I'm always empty. Always worthless. Always feeling like I haven't achieved a damned thing - and this drives me to be better, to create, to make, be that code, music, art, making random crap out of junk, or reading something, learning, aiming to have more knowledge that I can do things with.
Finally, from an objective standpoint, I have an IQ that caused my school to make me re-sit the IQ test with two people watching me, and still believe I had somehow cheated, and am diagnosed with cyclothymia. I choose to be unmedicated, as I'd far rather be sad and mad and have a drive to create and do, than be a happy docile blob.
How did you learn so much about your neurochemistry, especially your neurotransmitter levels? Any past experiences with medication?
And how do you deal with creative downtime, or relaxing?
Medication - yeah, tried a variety in my early 20's, hated side effects, ended up anxious over not being anxious.
Downtime and forced relaxation - weed. Only way I can make myself sit still.
216.224.180.96/~prom/oldsite/articles/Outsiders.html
Summary: it's well known that high IQs are linked to maladjustment in later life.
I sort of question if this 'bipolar' diagnosis is really a true bipolar disorder, or just an observed similarity between bipolar traits and high IQ thinking patterns.
Acute awareness and overdeveloped imagination can lead to exceptionally strong emotions about things that wouldn't even register to "normal" people (highly gifted children are often noted for some strange things like hypersensitivity to touch and color as well as both the intensity _and passing speed_ of their emotions). Simultaneously hyper-rationalization can cause those emotions to be checked rather forcefully even to the extend of flat affect (ala "Ender"). I wonder if the exterior effect could be seen as irrational mood swings, especially from a multi-choice survey...
It is a little frustrating that the sample is an extremely limited 22-23 years of age... I imagine that this age group is far more prone to _self-report_ behaviors that could be interpreted as bipolar behavior as it's a relatively unstable period of life to begin with, especially for gifted students who will selectively be entering high pressure job markets as opposed to their less competitive peers who will be settling into long-term careers.
Also, 10 IQ points is less than one standard deviation from the norm (a SD of IQ being defined as 15 points), so perhaps "above average intelligence" is a bit more accurate than "high intelligence" (I think 2 standard deviations is when you start talking about "gifted"ness). It would be interesting to see the wings of the distribution, although a sample of just 2000 would likely not spread much light there.
On this topic the face is a really good example of this. There are very few genetic causes of intellectual disability that don’t affect the face as well. There has been some speculation that our obsession with facial beauty is tied to this as a way of identifying mutations that otherwise would be hard to detect in potential mates.
But it still beats the depression :)
Yes, there is increased productivity, but the cost is a lot higher than you expect. The messed up thing is you crave it when you lose it - because the certainty is really super addictive.
What I think you're actually referring to is not mania or hypomania - it's called hyperthymia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymic_temperament
It's similar in some ways to hypomania, but different in others.
For one last point of reference, here's a hypomanic episode for me:
Everything in the world is great. Everything in the world is really great. Productivity for a day or two Holy shit, I'm so smart, everyone else is less smart than me! Productivity that is more random Oh my god, I can't believe how smart I am and how pathetic the rest of these people are. Productivity is super random, starting to be unproductive The most logical conclusion is that I'm probably god, like, I really do believe that, that seems very logical right now. Productivity goes away.
I have an appendix that flares up every few years and I leave it alone. I have a pain threshold that I have set that if I exceed I will go to the hospital, but if it stays below this level then I just watch and wait. I have no desire to be cut open unless I need to be. So far this has worked out well :)
The most important thing is keeping you healthy and okay. If you're healthy and okay, then that's wonderful.
One thing I will note, over time, monitor if it gets worse, and be vigilant as hell - it can develop depending on your age and over time, so just watch out. I'd even go so far as to ask someone, preferably someone in your family you don't see more than once or twice a year, to say if they notice a behavioral change in you, just as a backstop in case.
For reference, what finally got me to get help was very serious thoughts of suicide and a hypomanic episode where I quite literally thought I was god.
That doesn't follow. Simply because the genes sets overlap doesn't mean they have to correlate. If there are 10k genes affecting schizophrenia and 10k intelligence (plausible scales from the GWASes), then since there aren't that many varying genes there is likely overlap, but there's no reason to expect simply from this overlap that they will covary; the genes conferring benefits for one could confer problems for the other. In fact, the overlap could be total without creating correlation; and it would be just as plausible to argue for anti-correlation/inverse-correlation - the same gene could protect against schizophrenia and reductions in intelligence by making neurons more robust or defending against infections. There should be some deeper reason for any correlation of IQ/schizophrenia than simply 'they both are affected by a lot of genes'. (Well, an awful lot of traits are affected by a lot of genes, you know... Polygenicity is expected to be the norm for most of the heritable stuff.)
Worse, there are GWASes for both schizophrenia and IQ; the former has made a lot more progress than the latter, but nevertheless, I am not aware that any particular overlap in hits has been noticed.
And now I sort of bounce around. I've lately ended up more on the manic phase side of things but it's a quick flip of the switch towards a more depressed feeling. I'm learning to mellow out towards the center with lots of exercise, positive healthy habits, and plenty of dates from tinder. Rationally I figure visiting a therapist might not be the worst thing in the world, but then I have no idea what I'd talk about. I'm a white, male, software engineer living in a world class city, making a pretty penny. I'm tall, good looking, and funny. I'm working on a sitcom, standup, and have a great job. Rationally I also see that my life is indeed awesome so it's hard to justify going to a therapist. Also, if they caught me in a "manic" phase I'd probably just be gushing about how great things are, and I can annoy my friends with that sort of shit.
I've never been clinically diagnosed with anything so it's more of a self diagnosis and who knows how many grains of truth there are to it, but it feels relatively accurate.
That being said, if I continue on this upswing I've been putting myself into lately, I should be good to go! So cheers to that! I can weather the mildly bad times, I've weathered a lot of awful times, and I guess in the end, you only learn to understand yourself a bit better every time. And as long as you force yourself to get out of bed and do literally just about anything (easier said than done sometimes) it almost always gets better.
While I love mania and the amazingness of feeling like a god, it's not always (or often) that it's productive. Hypomania + stimulants seems a much better combo (esp as drugs can help kick off or stay sightly manic, though if taken sporadically, mania seems to result more often.)
Pretty much the takeaway.
Not too exciting...
You can't smart your way out of life having routines, thankfully.