Famous bipolars

Famous People with Bipolar Disorder


Much of this list was obtained from the Internet.

Actors & Actresses

Ned Beatty
Maurice Bernard, soap opera
Jeremy Brett
Jim Carey
Lisa Nicole Carson
Rosemary Clooney, singer
Lindsay Crosby
Eric Douglas
Robert Downey Jr.
Patty Duke
Carrie Fisher
Connie Francis, singer and actress
Shecky Greene, comedian
Linda Hamilton
Moss Hart, actor, director, playright
Mariette Hartley
Margot Kidder
Vivien Leigh
Kevin McDonald, comedian
Kristy McNichols
Burgess Meredith, actor, director
Spike Milligan, actor, writer
Spike Mulligan, comic actor and writer
Nicola Pagett
Ben Stiller, actor, director, writer
David Strickland
Lili Taylor
Tracy Ullman
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Robin Williams
Jonathon Winters, comedian

Artists

Alvin Alley, dancer, choreogapher
Ludwig Von Beethoven
Tim Burton, artist, director
Francis Ford Coppola, director
George Fredrick Handel, composer
Bill Lichtenstein, producer
Joshua Logan, broadway director, producer
Vincent Van Gogh, painter
Gustav Mahier, composer
Francesco Scavullo, artist, photographer
Robert Schumann, composer
Don Simpson, movie producer
Norman Wexler, screenwriter, playwright

Entrepreneurs

Robert Campeau
Pierre Peladeau
Heinz C. Prechter
Ted Turner, media giant

Financiers

John Mulheren
Murray Pezim

Miscellaneous

Buzz Aldrin, astronaut
Clifford Beers, humanitarian
Garnet Coleman, legislator (Texas)
Larry Flynt, publisher and activist
Kit Gingrich, Newt's mom
Phil Graham, owner of Washington Post
Peter Gregg, team owner and manager, race car driver
Susan Panico (Susan Dime-Meenan), business executive
Sol Wachtier, former New York State Chief Judge

Musicians

Ludwig van Beethoven, composer
Alohe Jean Burke, musician, vocalist
Rosemary Clooney, singer
DMX Earl Simmons, rapper and actor
Ray Davies
Lenny Dee
Gaetano Donizetti, opera singer
Peter Gabriel
Jimi Hendrix
Kristen Hersh (Throwing Muses)
Phyllis Hyman
Jack Irons
Daniel Johnston
Otto Klemperer, musician, conductor
Oscar Levant, pianist, composer, television
Phil Ochs, musician, political activist, poet
John Ogden, composer, musician
Jaco Pastorius
Charley Pride
Mac Rebennack (Dr. John)
Jeannie C. Riley
Alys Robi, vocalist in Canada
Axl Rose
Nick Traina
Del Shannon
Phil Spector, musician and producer
Sting, Gordon Sumner, musician, composer
Tom Waits, musician, composer
Brian Wilson, musician, composer, arranger
Townes Van Zandt, musician, composer

Poets

John Berryman
C.E. Chaffin, writer, poet
Hart Crane
Randall Jarrell
Jane Kenyon
Robert Lowell
Sylvia Plath
Robert Schumann
Delmore Schwartz

Political

Robert Boorstin, special assistant to President Clinton
L. Brent Bozell, political scientist, attorney, writer
Bob Bullock, ex secretary of state, state comptroller and lieutenant governer
Winston Churchill
Kitty Dukasis, former First Lady of Massachusetts
Thomas Eagleton, lawyer, former U.S. Senator
Lynne Rivers, U.S. Congress
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States


Scholars

John Strugnell, biblical scholar

Scientists

Karl Paul Link, chemist
Dimitri Mihalas

Sports

Shelley Beattie, bodybuilding, sailing
John Daly, golf
Muffin Spencer-Devlin, pro golf
Ilie Nastase, tennis
Jimmy Piersail, baseball player, Boston Red Sox, sports announcer
Barret Robbins, football
Wyatt Sexton, football
Alonzo Spellman, football
Darryl Strawberry, baseball
Dimitrius Underwood, football
Luther Wright, basketball
Bert Yancey, athlete


TV & Radio

Dick Cavett
Jay Marvin, radio, writer
Jane Pauley

Writers

Louis Althusser, philosopher, writer
Honors de Balzac
Art Buchwald, writer, humorist
Neal Cassady
Patricia Cornwell
Margot Early
Kaye Gibbons
Johann Goethe
Graham Greene
Abbie Hoffman, writer, political activist
Kay Redfield Jamison, writer, psychologist
Peter Nolan Lawrence
Frances Lear, writer, editor, women's rights activist
Rika Lesser, writer, translator
Kate Millet
Robert Munsch
Margo Orum
Edgar Allen Poe
Theodore Roethke
Lori Schiller, writer, educator
Frances Sherwood
Scott Simmie, writer, journalist
August Strindberg
Mark Twain
Joseph Vasquez, writer, movie director
Mark Vonnegut, doctor, writer
Sol Wachtler, writer, judge
Mary Jane Ward
Virginia Woolf

I have a question. How do they know that about Beethoven, and people that lived way before our time?

That's really interesting! Thanks for posting it.

I thought that the current theory, supported by some evidence, for Beethoven's erratic behavior in later life, was due to lead poisoning.

element (signed out) wrote:I have a question. How do they know that about Beethoven, and people that lived way before our time?

That's really interesting! Thanks for posting it.

Yeah, you do a simple google search and get all kinds of imfo on some great people who had bipolar.

I hope you enjoyed the imfo. I get out of ... don't let others stop you , in your dreams, believe in yourself and what makes up special, makes us important to the world. OUr thoughts are often so advanced, and imaginitive. This is the thing that makes a gift or we could look at it as a curse, because of sx's, but I really like looking at the things and ideas I can sometimes have that I also have the guts to persue, but with good judgement and a second opinion. of course.

Thanks for that long list. All of us bipolars should know and remind ourselves that many famous people have had bipolar. One author has stated that we would still be in the dark ages if it were not for the efforts and immagination of bipolars throughout.

Bipolars often have great amounts of energy and vision that most average people lack.

On my website I have an article about many famous people who suffered with mood disorders.
Jim S

Tracey Ullman! Theodore Roosevelt! Totally different people, but YAY!

Yet another Famous Bipolar Abraham Lincoln

element (signed out) wrote:I have a question. How do they know that about Beethoven, and people that lived way before our time?

That's really interesting! Thanks for posting it.

element (signed out) wrote:I have a question. How do they know that about Beethoven, and people that lived way before our time?

That's really interesting! Thanks for posting it.

History of the bipolar disorders
Varying moods and energy levels have been a part of the human experience since time immemorial. The words Depression (previously melancholia) and Mania have their etymologies in Ancient Greek. The word melancholia is derived from ‘melas’, meaning black, and ‘chole’, meaning bile, indicative of the term’s origins in pre-Hippocratic humoral theories (Malhi and Yatham 2004). Within the humoral theories, mania was viewed as arising from an excess of yellow bile (Mondimore 1999), or a mixture of black and yellow bile (Akiskal 2004). The linguistic origins of mania, however, are not so clear-cut. Several etymologies are proposed by the Roman physician Caelius Aurelianus, including the Greek word ‘ania’, meaning to produce great mental anguish, and ‘manos’, meaning relaxed or loose, which would contextually approximate to an excessive relaxing of the mind or soul (Angst and Marneros 2001). There are at least five other candidates, and part of the confusion surrounding the exact etymology of the word mania is its varied usage in the pre-Hippocratic poetry and mythologies (Angst and Marneros 2001).

The idea of a relationship between mania and melancholia can be traced back to at least the 2nd century AD. Soranus of Ephedrus (98-177 AD) described mania and melancholia as distinct diseases with separate aetiologies; however, he acknowledged that “many others consider melancholia a form of the disease of mania” (Cited in Mondimore 2005 p.49).

The earliest written descriptions of a relationship between mania and melancholia are attributed to Aretaeus of Cappadocia. Aretaeus was an eclectic medical philosopher who lived in Alexandria somewhere between 30 and 150 AD (Roccatagliata 1986; Akiskal 1996). Aretaeus is recognized as having authored most of the surviving texts referring to a unified concept of manic-depressive illness, viewing both melancholia and mania as having a common origin in ‘black bile’ (Akiskal 1996; Marneros 2001).

The contemporary psychiatric conceptualisation of manic-depressive illness is typically traced back to the 1850s. Marneros (2001) describes the concepts emerging out of this period as the “rebirth of bipolarity in the modern era”. On January 31st 1854, Jules Baillarger described to the French Imperial Academy of Medicine a biphasic mental illness causing recurrent oscillations between mania and depression. Two weeks later, on the 14th February 1854, Jean-Pierre Falret presented a description to the Academy on what was essentially the same disorder. This illness was designated folie circulaire (‘circular insanity’) by Falret, and folie à double forme (‘dual-form insanity’) by Baillarger (Sedler 1983).

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), a German psychiatrist considered by many (including Hagop Akiskal M.D.) to be the father of the modern conceptualization of bipolar disorder, categorized and studied the natural course of untreated bipolar patients long before mood stabilizers were discovered. Describing these patients in 1902, he coined the term "manic depressive psychosis." He noted in his patient observations that intervals of acute illness, manic or depressive, were generally punctuated by relatively symptom-free intervals in which the patient was able to function normally.

After World War II, Dr John Cade, Psychiatrist, Bundoora Repatriation Hospital, Melbourne, Australia was investigating the effects of various compounds on veteran patients with manic depressive psychosis. In 1948, Dr John Cade discovered that Lithium Carbonate could be used as a successful treatment of manic depressive psychosis. This was the first time a compound or drug had been discovered that proved to be a successful treatment of any psychiatric condition. The discovery was perhaps the beginning of psychopharmacological treatments of psychiatric conditions. The discovery preceded the discovery of phenothiazines for the treatment of schizophrenia, and the discovery of benzodiazapines for the treatment of anxiety states, by about 4 years.

The term "manic-depressive illness" first appeared in 1958. The current nosology, bipolar disorder, became popular only recently and some individuals prefer the older term because it provides a better description of a continually changing multi-dimensional illness.

source: wikopedia

WOW! I feel so smart now that I "got my learn on" by reading ddee's post. Very interesting factoids. Thanks for the post, ddee.

Kurt Cobain was bipolar, Kurt Cobain! So was Jeff Buckley. I thought Abe Lincoln had severe, incapacitating, suicidal depression. His wife Mary Todd had schizophrenia.