Bipolar Disorder
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40 free Bipolar Disorder trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bipolar disorder touches roughly one to three people in every hundred over a lifetime, yet most of what the public knows about it comes from films and headlines. The real story is stranger and more interesting: a treatment found almost by accident, a soft drink with a medical past, and a centuries-long argument over what to call the condition. These questions turn the best fun facts about bipolar disorder into a quiz. They cover how doctors tell the different types apart, what can set off an episode, how lithium went from a Victorian-era remedy for an unrelated ailment to a standard medicine, and which actors, musicians and writers have spoken openly about living with the diagnosis. The quiz is written for curious general readers, psychology students and anyone who wants to understand a friend or relative a little better. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and nothing here is medical advice.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01World Bipolar Day falls on March 30, the birthday of which Post-Impressionist painter?
Vincent van Gogh
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.
Q 02Which lemon-lime soda claimed in its early years to contain mood-stabilizing lithium citrate?
7UP
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.
Q 03Psychiatrist John Cade discovered lithium's calming effect in 1948 after injecting it into which animals?
Guinea pigs
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.
Q 04Which Star Wars actress spoke openly about her bipolar disorder and wrote the memoir Wishful Drinking?
Carrie Fisher
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.
Q 05Which actor was Oscar-nominated as Pat Solitano, a man with bipolar disorder, in Silver Linings Playbook?
Bradley Cooper
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.
Q 06Which TV spy drama stars Claire Danes as a CIA officer who keeps her bipolar disorder secret?
Homeland
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.
Q 07Which rapper confirmed his bipolar disorder with a phrase printed on the cover of a 2018 album?
Kanye West
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.
Q 08Which grunge band named a song on a 1991 album after lithium, the classic bipolar medication?
Nirvana
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.
Q 09Which guitarist put a song called Manic Depression on his 1967 debut album Are You Experienced?
Jimi Hendrix
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.
Q 10Bipolar mood stabilizers valproate and lamotrigine are primarily drugs for which neurological condition?
Epilepsy
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.
Q 11Going without which basic need can induce mania in about 30 percent of people with bipolar disorder?
Sleep
Sleep loss is so reliable a trigger that the start of a manic or depressive episode is often foreshadowed by disturbed nights.
Q 12Which hazard of long-haul travel can destabilize bipolar disorder and tip some travellers into mania?
Jet lag
Jet lag from crossing many time zones upsets the body clock, and that disruption can tip some travellers into a manic episode.
Q 13Which factor may account for up to 70 to 90 percent of the risk of developing bipolar disorder?
Genetics
Genetics dominates the risk, yet no single gene is responsible. Many regions of the genome each add a mild to moderate effect.
Q 21Which German psychiatrist first separated manic-depressive illness from what is now called schizophrenia?
Emil Kraepelin
Emil Kraepelin saw that manic-depressive patients were largely symptom-free between episodes, while the other group's mental function steadily declined.
Q 22Which name did French psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Falret give in 1851 to cycles of mania and melancholy?
Circular insanity
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.
Q 23Ancient physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia blamed both manic and depressed moods on an excess of which bodily humour?
Black bile
Q 14Which milder relative of bipolar disorder brings at least two years of mood swings without full episodes?
Cyclothymia
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.
Q 15Which two-word term describes having four or more bipolar mood episodes within a single year?
Rapid cycling
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.
Q 16Which term do psychiatrists use for the stable, normal mood between episodes of bipolar disorder?
Euthymia
Euthymia is neither depressive nor manic, and reaching and then keeping it is the main goal of treatment.
Q 17Which diagnosis requires just one manic episode lasting at least a week, with no depressive episode needed?
Bipolar I
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.
Q 18Which class of medication, taken alone in a bipolar low phase, can trigger a switch into mania?
Antidepressants
Antidepressants on their own carry a risk of flipping a low mood into mania, so guidelines advise against using them without a mood stabilizer.
Q 19Long-term lithium treatment calls for regular checks on the thyroid and which other part of the body?
Kidneys
Kidneys can be worn down by lithium over many years, because the drug interferes with how the body regulates sodium and water.
Q 20At which stage of life do the symptoms of bipolar disorder most often first appear?
Teens to twenties
Teens to twenties is the usual window, and the earlier the start, the more likely the first few episodes are to be depressive ones.
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.
Q 24Which term did Karl Leonhard pair with bipolar in 1957 to describe depression without any mania?
Unipolar
Unipolar depression has only the low pole of mood. Leonhard built the split on the two-pole idea of his mentor, Karl Kleist.
Q 25The word mania traces back to which ancient language, where it meant madness or frenzy?
Greek
Greek gave medicine the word mania, which reached English by way of Latin. A related verb meant to rage or be furious.
Q 26Long before psychiatry adopted it, lithium was a nineteenth-century treatment for which painful joint disease?
Gout
Gout became a target after scientists found that lithium could dissolve uric acid crystals, at least in the laboratory.
Q 27In the 1940s, lithium chloride caused fatal poisonings when sold as a substitute for which kitchen staple?
Table salt
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.
Q 28The 1948 discovery that lithium calms mania was made by John Cade, a doctor working in which country?
Australia
Australia was home to the Melbourne hospital where he worked. He modestly called himself a gold prospector who happened to find a nugget.
Q 29Lithium, the classic bipolar mood stabilizer, belongs to which family of the periodic table?
Alkali metals
Alkali metals are also called the lithium family after their leading element, which is the least dense metal of all.
Q 30Which clinical term describes the rapid, loud, hard-to-interrupt talking common during manic episodes?
Pressured speech
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.