40 Fun Facts About Bipolar Disorder

World Bipolar Day falls on March 30, the birthday of which Post-Impressionist painter?

Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853, and the day aims to end stigma around the condition. Whether the painter himself had it is still debated by doctors.

Which lemon-lime soda claimed in its early years to contain mood-stabilizing lithium citrate?

7UP was labelled a lithiated lemon soda in the early 1930s, and one theory ties the seven to lithium's atomic mass. The health claims were dropped later that decade.

Psychiatrist John Cade discovered lithium's calming effect in 1948 after injecting it into which animals?

Guinea pigs given lithium carbonate grew unusually restful, which surprised Cade. He then swallowed lithium himself to check it was safe before trying it on patients with mania.

Which Star Wars actress spoke openly about her bipolar disorder and wrote the memoir Wishful Drinking?

Carrie Fisher nicknamed her two moods Roy and Pam. Wishful Drinking began as her one-woman stage show, which reached Broadway before HBO filmed it.

Which actor was Oscar-nominated as Pat Solitano, a man with bipolar disorder, in Silver Linings Playbook?

Bradley Cooper plays Pat just after his release from a psychiatric hospital. The film earned eight Oscar nominations, and co-star Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress.

Which TV spy drama stars Claire Danes as a CIA officer who keeps her bipolar disorder secret?

Homeland follows Danes's character as she hides her diagnosis from the agency while hunting a suspected terrorist. The role won her two lead-actress Emmys.

Which rapper confirmed his bipolar disorder with a phrase printed on the cover of a 2018 album?

Kanye West unveiled the album, Ye, at a listening party in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he had recorded it. Mental health runs through its songs as a theme.

Which grunge band named a song on a 1991 album after lithium, the classic bipolar medication?

Nirvana put the song on the album Nevermind, and it reached number 11 on the UK singles chart. Kurt Cobain said it was about a man who turns to religion after a loss.

Which guitarist put a song called Manic Depression on his 1967 debut album Are You Experienced?

Jimi Hendrix wrote the song and recorded it with his band, the Experience, in 1967. Jeff Beck later covered it with the singer Seal on a tribute album.

Bipolar mood stabilizers valproate and lamotrigine are primarily drugs for which neurological condition?

Epilepsy drugs turned out to steady mood as well as stop seizures. Valproate's anti-seizure effect was found by accident in 1962, when a French researcher was using it as a solvent for other compounds.

Going without which basic need can induce mania in about 30 percent of people with bipolar disorder?

Sleep loss is so reliable a trigger that the start of a manic or depressive episode is often foreshadowed by disturbed nights.

Which hazard of long-haul travel can destabilize bipolar disorder and tip some travellers into mania?

Jet lag from crossing many time zones upsets the body clock, and that disruption can tip some travellers into a manic episode.

Which factor may account for up to 70 to 90 percent of the risk of developing bipolar disorder?

Genetics dominates the risk, yet no single gene is responsible. Many regions of the genome each add a mild to moderate effect.

Which milder relative of bipolar disorder brings at least two years of mood swings without full episodes?

Cyclothymia involves many periods of low and elevated mood that never reach full depression or mania. In children the pattern needs to last only one year.

Which two-word term describes having four or more bipolar mood episodes within a single year?

Rapid cycling is usually temporary, yet it affects roughly a quarter to nearly half of people with the condition at some point in their lives.

Which term do psychiatrists use for the stable, normal mood between episodes of bipolar disorder?

Euthymia is neither depressive nor manic, and reaching and then keeping it is the main goal of treatment.

Which diagnosis requires just one manic episode lasting at least a week, with no depressive episode needed?

Bipolar I can be diagnosed from mania alone. Even so, a low mood rather than a high one is the most common first symptom of the condition.

Which class of medication, taken alone in a bipolar low phase, can trigger a switch into mania?

Antidepressants on their own carry a risk of flipping a low mood into mania, so guidelines advise against using them without a mood stabilizer.

Long-term lithium treatment calls for regular checks on the thyroid and which other part of the body?

Kidneys can be worn down by lithium over many years, because the drug interferes with how the body regulates sodium and water.

At which stage of life do the symptoms of bipolar disorder most often first appear?

Teens to twenties is the usual window, and the earlier the start, the more likely the first few episodes are to be depressive ones.

Which German psychiatrist first separated manic-depressive illness from what is now called schizophrenia?

Emil Kraepelin saw that manic-depressive patients were largely symptom-free between episodes, while the other group's mental function steadily declined.

Which name did French psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Falret give in 1851 to cycles of mania and melancholy?

Circular insanity, or la folie circulaire, is seen as the first recorded diagnosis of the condition. A rival French doctor, Jules Baillarger, described much the same illness in 1854.

Ancient physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia blamed both manic and depressed moods on an excess of which bodily humour?

Black bile was thought to cause both moods. Aretaeus, a Greek physician of the Roman era, left the earliest surviving account linking them as one illness.

Which term did Karl Leonhard pair with bipolar in 1957 to describe depression without any mania?

Unipolar depression has only the low pole of mood. Leonhard built the split on the two-pole idea of his mentor, Karl Kleist.

The word mania traces back to which ancient language, where it meant madness or frenzy?

Greek gave medicine the word mania, which reached English by way of Latin. A related verb meant to rage or be furious.

Long before psychiatry adopted it, lithium was a nineteenth-century treatment for which painful joint disease?

Gout became a target after scientists found that lithium could dissolve uric acid crystals, at least in the laboratory.

In the 1940s, lithium chloride caused fatal poisonings when sold as a substitute for which kitchen staple?

Table salt was being cut from the diets of heart patients, and the lithium stand-in proved deadly even in fairly minor overdoses. The United States banned the practice in 1949.

The 1948 discovery that lithium calms mania was made by John Cade, a doctor working in which country?

Australia was home to the Melbourne hospital where he worked. He modestly called himself a gold prospector who happened to find a nugget.

Lithium, the classic bipolar mood stabilizer, belongs to which family of the periodic table?

Alkali metals are also called the lithium family after their leading element, which is the least dense metal of all.

Which clinical term describes the rapid, loud, hard-to-interrupt talking common during manic episodes?

Pressured speech comes without pauses, and the speaker may ignore every cue that others want a turn, even carrying on after the listeners have left.

Which core symptom of mania involves an unrealistic sense of superiority, uniqueness or invulnerability?

Grandiosity can swell into full delusions, such as believing oneself a famous intellectual or someone with a special tie to world leaders.

Severe mania can bring delusions and hallucinations, a break from reality known by which clinical term?

Psychosis has affected well over half of people who have had a full manic episode, and what they experience tends to match their mood.

Which British comedian presented the Emmy-winning 2006 documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive?

Stephen Fry interviewed celebrities and members of the public about living with the condition. In 2011 he became president of the mental health charity Mind.

Which 1995 memoir did psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison write about her own bipolar disorder?

An Unquiet Mind tells how she stopped taking lithium several times, against medical advice, before she came to accept her diagnosis.

Which Miracle Worker Oscar winner revealed her bipolar diagnosis in the 1987 autobiography Call Me Anna?

Patty Duke had been diagnosed five years earlier, and became one of the first public figures to speak out about her own mental illness.

Which pop star, known for a five-octave vocal range, revealed in 2018 her treatment for bipolar II?

Mariah Carey had been diagnosed back in 2001 but kept it private for seventeen years before she spoke about her therapy and medication.

Which Oscar winner for the musical film Chicago went public with her bipolar II diagnosis?

Catherine Zeta-Jones won her Oscar as Velma Kelly. She spoke out after a stressful period in which her husband, Michael Douglas, was diagnosed with cancer.

Which rock musical about a suburban mother with bipolar disorder won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Next to Normal also won three Tony Awards, one of them for Alice Ripley's lead performance, and was only the eighth musical to take the Pulitzer.

Trace amounts of lithium occurring naturally in which everyday source are linked to lower suicide rates?

Drinking water with more natural lithium is also associated with lower rates of violent crime, and the suicide link is strongest among men.

Which actor played a father with bipolar disorder caring for his daughters in the film Infinitely Polar Bear?

Mark Ruffalo earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role. The film, written and directed by Maya Forbes, is set in Boston in the late 1970s.