Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison has said of her own experience with bipolar disorder: “When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones.”
Other accomplished women who have a history of unipolar depression or bipolar include Linda Hamilton, Mariette Hartley, Jane Pauley, Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, Lorraine Bracco, Carrie Fisher, and Brooke Shields.
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Patricia Cornwell, acclaimed for her forensic novels such as Predator, admitted in a Times [London] interview [“I’m not weird, I’m just wired differently” by Andrew Billen, Dec 06, 2005] that she has had her own difficulties:
“My wiring’s not perfect and there are ways that you can stabilise that. I have certain things that run in my own ancestry. It’s not unusual for great artistic people to have bipolar disorder, for example. The diagnosis goes back and forth but I’m pretty sure that I am. I take a mood stabiliser.”
Book: Kay Redfield Jamison. Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.
My related Facebook page: Emotional Health and Creativity.
One of my many articles: Performers and Depression.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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