http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

By Susan Perry | Published Thu, May 13 2010 10:22 am

At Mind Hacks this week, British neuropsychologist Vaughn Bell reports on a large Swedish study whose findings seem to support the theory that genius and “madness” are somehow intertwined.

The study, published earlier this year in The British Journal of Psychiatry, found that high-school students — particularly male students — with the very highest (top 2 percent) academic achievement records were four times more likely to be hospitalized for bipolar disorder later in life than their peers with average grades.

The study (which included more than a quarter of a million students) also found that students with the lowest grades were twice as likely as their average-grade peers to develop the disorder.

The finding that both very high and very low grades were associated with an increased risk of bipolar disorder suggests, say the study’s authors, that there may be two different forms of the illness — each with different causes.

The study’s findings held up even after the researchers controlled for factors known to be associated with the development of bipolar disorder, such as the parents’ level of education and socioeconomic status.

Absolute risk still very low
But before any of you parents start panicking, you should know that these findings reflect a relative, not an absolute, risk. In fact, the absolute risk — the chance that any particular high- or low-performing student will develop bipolar disorder — is quite low. “For example,” writes Bell, “of the 9,427 top performing students only 12 were diagnosed and hospitalized with bipolar — a high rate compared to the average performers but still rare.”

Nor should any students use these findings as an excuse to slough off at school. Working hard at school doesn’t cause bipolar disorder. As the study’s authors point out, the illness is strongly genetic, and, therefore, the association between academic achievement and bipolar disorder is most likely a genetic effect. For example, whatever genetically predisposes students to focus and study hard in high school may also predispose them to developing bipolar disorder later in life.

A link to creativity?
Bell disagrees with the study’s lead author, British psychiatrist James MacCabe, that more “creative” students seem to be at greatest risk of developing bipolar disorder.

“I have to say that’s probably pushing it a bit,” Bell writes. “They seem to be fairly evenly spread, although, interestingly, performing well in handicraft and sport indicated the students were less likely to be diagnosed with the condition in later life.”