Are Mania & Bipolar Related to Creativity? | Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | I'd like to just briefly touch upon this idea
00:00:05.000 | that certain occupations are associated
00:00:09.560 | with a higher incidence of bipolar depression.
00:00:12.520 | And in fact, it's been explored at a research level.
00:00:16.840 | Really, there are data pointed to the fact
00:00:19.240 | that certain individuals of certain occupations
00:00:22.480 | tend to be more creative
00:00:24.200 | and that creativity is associated with,
00:00:26.320 | again, associate, this isn't causal,
00:00:28.400 | it's associate or correlated with,
00:00:30.480 | higher levels or incidence of bipolar depression
00:00:33.760 | and maybe even other forms of depression.
00:00:35.760 | So this is a study looking at mood disorders
00:00:38.880 | in eminent individuals.
00:00:40.480 | So these are people that are not just good at what they do,
00:00:43.600 | but are exceptional at what they do,
00:00:45.600 | and explored the percentage of people in given professions
00:00:50.320 | with either depression or mania.
00:00:53.680 | And this was actually a dataset gleaned
00:00:56.080 | from more than 1,000 20th century Westerners
00:00:59.760 | based on their biographies that were reviewed
00:01:02.920 | by other people.
00:01:03.760 | So it's a bit of an indirect measurement.
00:01:05.240 | This isn't psychiatrist data.
00:01:07.240 | This is data, or I should say, these are data
00:01:10.400 | that were compiled from self-reports
00:01:14.000 | or from reads of self-reports.
00:01:16.840 | And they explored a number of different professions.
00:01:18.520 | So for instance, they looked at people in the military
00:01:21.160 | or people who were professional athletes
00:01:23.120 | or natural scientists or social scientists,
00:01:25.760 | people who occupied positions in public office
00:01:28.040 | or were musical performers, artists,
00:01:30.960 | nonfiction writers, poetry, et cetera.
00:01:33.280 | There are a lot of professions here.
00:01:34.920 | I will post this, or I'll post a link to it
00:01:37.360 | in the show note captions for you to peruse,
00:01:39.680 | but I'll just give you a sense of the extremes
00:01:41.800 | on this graph because they're very interesting.
00:01:44.120 | Turns out that if you were to look at the profession,
00:01:47.200 | or I should say among the professions they looked at
00:01:49.640 | in this study, 'cause they didn't look at all professions,
00:01:52.900 | those in the military and those who are professional
00:01:56.220 | athletes or had jobs in the social or natural sciences
00:02:00.260 | had the, of those, there was a lower percentage
00:02:03.940 | of those that had depression or mania.
00:02:06.620 | In some cases, like those who are professional athletes
00:02:08.580 | didn't seem to have, there was no incidence of mania,
00:02:11.060 | at least in this data set.
00:02:12.820 | Whereas at the opposite extreme of the graph,
00:02:15.260 | those that were poets, so these are eminent individuals,
00:02:18.860 | people that were exceptional poets,
00:02:20.740 | exceptional fiction writers, exceptional artists,
00:02:24.020 | or non-fiction writers.
00:02:25.980 | Well, there, especially for the poets,
00:02:28.760 | you find that as many as 90% of these very successful poets
00:02:33.760 | had either depression or mania.
00:02:38.360 | As high as 90%, that's incredible.
00:02:41.900 | Contrast that with military where it's as few as 10%
00:02:44.900 | or professional athletes where it's as few as 20%.
00:02:47.140 | And for the professional athletes, as I mentioned before,
00:02:49.260 | none of them had mania.
00:02:50.900 | So does this mean that being a poet
00:02:53.740 | will make you manic or depressed?
00:02:55.280 | Well, first of all, let's look at the poetry category.
00:02:58.000 | It turns out that 75% of these eminent poets,
00:03:02.580 | these highly accomplished poets had major depression.
00:03:06.460 | Whereas only about 20% of those poets had manic episodes.
00:03:12.320 | Okay, so again, it's not that being a poet
00:03:17.340 | is going to give you mania.
00:03:18.260 | Certainly, we're not saying that.
00:03:19.300 | It's not that being a poet is going to give you depression,
00:03:21.140 | but it turns out that people with depression
00:03:24.300 | and people with depression and mania
00:03:26.900 | seem to gravitate towards poetry,
00:03:28.820 | or at least are very successful at poetry.
00:03:31.120 | Again, associative, correlative, no causal relationship here.
00:03:36.940 | But it is really striking to see
00:03:39.020 | how the creative occupations, poetry, fiction, art,
00:03:43.840 | non-fiction writing, even though non-fiction writing
00:03:46.020 | is about non-fiction, it's still creative.
00:03:47.820 | Music, composition, theater,
00:03:49.620 | much higher incidence of things like mania.
00:03:52.340 | And in fact, for the people in theater, the actors,
00:03:55.700 | even though the overall occurrence of depression and mania
00:03:59.540 | is lower than that in poets,
00:04:01.900 | the fraction of those individuals that have mania
00:04:05.660 | is exceedingly high.
00:04:07.200 | It's about 30% of those that they looked at
00:04:09.980 | who are actors have manic episodes
00:04:15.500 | or have full-blown mania.
00:04:16.940 | So I'm referring to these data because,
00:04:19.220 | first of all, I find them incredibly interesting, right?
00:04:21.420 | Up until now, we've been talking about bipolar disorder
00:04:23.340 | and other mood disorders for their maladaptive effects.
00:04:26.380 | And again, they're extremely maladaptive,
00:04:28.040 | much, much higher incidence of suicide, et cetera.
00:04:31.140 | But we'd be wrong to say that certain aspects
00:04:33.700 | of manic episodes don't lend themselves well to creativity
00:04:36.700 | or that certain aspects of major depression
00:04:38.580 | don't lend themselves well to creativity
00:04:41.640 | or to the performing arts or to poetry.
00:04:44.000 | That said, in no way, shape or form,
00:04:47.600 | do I believe that being depressed is a good thing
00:04:50.960 | or that being manic is a good thing.
00:04:52.560 | Again, we return to the basic foundational criteria
00:04:55.600 | for bipolar disorder and major depression,
00:04:57.160 | which is that the pressured speech, the not sleeping,
00:05:01.640 | the incredible increases in energy and the flights of ideas
00:05:06.420 | are generally not going to lead,
00:05:08.880 | or I think it's fair to say,
00:05:10.720 | are not going to lead to good places.
00:05:12.820 | In fact, often lead to bad places.
00:05:15.520 | But we would also be wrong if we didn't consider the fact
00:05:18.820 | that there is a somewhat inextricable relationship
00:05:22.400 | between mania and creativity.
00:05:24.760 | And it could be that hypomania or brief periods of mania,
00:05:29.760 | maybe even an hour a day or 30 minutes a day
00:05:32.160 | of composing or writing poetry,
00:05:34.200 | maybe even some of the lows that we feel, right?
00:05:36.640 | Some of the sadness, some of the grief,
00:05:38.200 | some of the nostalgia that we feel,
00:05:39.880 | provided that it's not pathologic,
00:05:41.960 | that it's not persistent for the four or seven days
00:05:44.920 | that are diagnostic of bipolar two
00:05:47.080 | and bipolar one disorder respectively.
00:05:49.160 | Well, then we can start to view emotional states
00:05:52.760 | as something that can actually lend themselves
00:05:55.040 | to positive outcomes and maybe even to creativity
00:05:58.160 | and to improved occupations.
00:05:59.900 | So it's important that we have a nuanced view
00:06:02.200 | of what sadness versus depression
00:06:05.260 | versus major depression are.
00:06:07.040 | It's important that we distinguish between being erratic,
00:06:11.680 | being very energized and full-blown bipolar disorder.
00:06:15.440 | And I raise this for another reason as well.
00:06:17.440 | Nowadays, it's very common to hear people saying,
00:06:20.340 | "Oh, you know, that person is OCD."
00:06:22.280 | Well, on the episode about OCD that I did a few weeks back,
00:06:26.620 | that you can find if you like at hubermanlab.com,
00:06:29.800 | in that episode, I pointed out that OCD,
00:06:33.400 | obsessive compulsive disorder, is very maladaptive, right?
00:06:36.460 | I think it's number seven, as I recall,
00:06:38.560 | on the list of debilitating diseases, all diseases,
00:06:42.000 | in terms of lost time at work,
00:06:43.840 | suffering relationships, et cetera.
00:06:45.520 | So it's a really serious condition.
00:06:47.240 | And yet we often hear, "Oh, that person is obsessive."
00:06:49.720 | And as I pointed out,
00:06:51.020 | there is obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
00:06:53.440 | And then there is obsessive compulsive tendencies,
00:06:56.200 | which actually benefit people.
00:06:57.940 | But that is distinct from obsessive compulsive disorder
00:07:01.400 | as a clinically diagnosed thing.
00:07:04.120 | Similarly, we hear that, "Oh, somebody is being bipolar."
00:07:07.720 | "You know, they're all over the place, they're bipolar."
00:07:09.800 | Well, that's a very subjective and kind of label
00:07:13.600 | that people give one another in passing.
00:07:16.520 | More and more often, I'm hearing this.
00:07:17.920 | And yet bipolar disorder, whether or not it's BP1 or BP2,
00:07:22.680 | are extremely maladaptive
00:07:24.760 | and extremely associated with high suicide risk.
00:07:29.060 | So while I'm not here to police people,
00:07:32.360 | certainly not the word police or the nomenclature police,
00:07:34.960 | I do think that whether or not you refer to people as OCD
00:07:37.840 | or as bipolar, et cetera, that's up to you, all right?
00:07:39.920 | It's not my place to say.
00:07:41.160 | But I do think it's important that all of us understand
00:07:43.720 | that these psychiatric conditions
00:07:45.580 | carry with them tremendous maladaptive weight.
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