At a recent seminar on bipolar disorder at St. Andrew's University, the personality Stephen Fry discussed his condition with psychiatric students and practitioners. He has also made a series of programmes for the BBC about his condition and how it famously manifested itself in 1995 when he walked out of the West End play Cellmates.
Other celebrities who also suffer from bipolar include Hollywood actors Richard Dreyfus and Carrie Fisher, and British comedians Tony Slattery and Jo Brand. It is interesting to note how sufferers working in the creative arts can diffuse their talents in such a positive way. Conversely, history is littered with undoubted sufferers who went undiagnosed: artists like Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Van Gogh and Hemingway.
There is an interesting character in Eastenders on BBC TV called Jean Slater (the mother of Stacey). In recent weeks, the storyline has followed Jean's personality fluctuations: from the highs when she was close to her son Sean, followed by the lows when he went away. It was only when Jean finally realised the seriousness of her condition that it was revealed she had bipolar disorder.
What exactly is bipolar disorder?
