Originally published November 10 2005
Children with bipolar parents test high for creativity
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Journal of Psychiatric Research published a study that found the children of bipolar parents scored higher on creativity tests than other children, further solidifying the suspected link between creativity and mood disorder.
The small study, published in the November issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research, compared creativity test scores of children of healthy parents with the scores of children of bipolar parents.
"I think it's fascinating," said Kiki Chang, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and co-author of the paper.
Many scientists believe that a relationship exists between creativity and bipolar disorder, which was formerly called manic-depressive illness and is marked by dramatic shifts in a person's mood, energy and ability to function.
Ketter said he believes that bipolar patients' creativity stems from their mobilizing energy that results from negative emotion to initiate some sort of solution to their problems.
There have only been limited studies investigating this; the Stanford study is the first to specifically examine creativity in the offspring of bipolar parents.
Half of the children of bipolar patients also had bipolar disorder; the other half had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, which appears to be an early sign of bipolar disorder in offspring of parents with the condition.
"We wanted to see whether having a manic episode is necessary for this sort of creativity," said Chang, who also directs the Pediatric Bipolar Disorders Program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
The scoring is based on "like" and "dislike" responses to figures of varying complexity and symmetry; past studies suggest that creative people tend to dislike the simple and symmetric symbols.
The children with bipolar and the children with ADHD had, respectively, 107 and 91 percent higher BWAS dislike scores than the healthy children.
"The results of this study support an association between bipolar disease and creativity and contribute to a better understanding of possible mechanisms of transmission of creativity in families with genetic susceptibility for bipolar disease," the researchers wrote in their paper.
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