Famous people with bipolar disorder exist in every facet of our society, and have made some of the greatest contributions to our culture.
The most recent list of contemporary Celebrities and famous people with Bipolar Disorder includes:
Demi Lovato
Sinead O'Connor
Jane Pauly
Mariette Hartley
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Vivien Leigh
Russell Brand
Carrie Fisher
Amy Winehouse
Maurice Bernard
Linda Hamilton
Kurt Cobain
Winston Churchill
The following is a list of Famous People with Bipolar Disorder (in recent history).
This list is based on Joy Ikelmann's Bipolar Info page which is archived at atarchive.org.
The following are famous people with bipolar disorder who have spoken publicly about being bipolar:
Robert Boorstin, writer, special assistant to Pres. Clinton
Rosemary Clooney, singer
Dick Cavett, writer, media personality
Kitty Dukakis, former First Lady of Massachusetts
Patty Duke (Anna Pearce), actor, writer
Connie Francis, actor, musician
Peter Gabriel, musician
Shecky Greene, comedian
Kristin Hersh, musician (Throwing Muses)
Peter Nolan Lawrence, writer
Bill Lichtenstein, producer (TV & radio)
Kristy McNichols, actor
Kate Millett, writer
Spike Mulligan, comic actor and writer, Patron of the MFD
Murray Pezim
Charley Pride, musician
Axl Rose, musician
John Strugnell, Biblical scholar, Harvard
Ted Turner, entrepreneur, media giant (U.S.)
Jonathon Winters, comedian, actor, writer, artist
Kay Redfield Jamison, one of the leading researchers and writers on the subject of Bipolar Disorder (and Bipolar herself), has compiled an exhaustive list of famous people with bipolar disorder who have made major artistic contributions to the world.
The following lists are drawn from Kay Jamison's Touched With Fire; Manic-Depressive Ilness and the Artistic Temperament [Appendix B: Writers, Artists, and Composers with Probable Cyclothymia, Major Depression, or Manic-Depressive Illness]. "This is meant to be an illustrative rather than a comprehensive list; for systematic studies, see text. Most of the writers, composers, and artists are American, British, European, Irish, or Russian; all are deceased . . . Many if not most of these writers, artists, and composers had other major problems as well, such as medical illnesses, alcoholism or drug addiction, or exceptionally difficult life circumstances. They are listed here as having suffered from a mood disorder because their mood symptoms predated their other conditions, because the nature and course of their mood and behavior symptoms were consistent with a diagnosis of an independently existing affective illness, and/or because their family histories of depression, manic-depressive illness, and suicide--coupled with their own symptoms--were sufficiently strong to warrant their inclusion."
KEY:
H = Asylum or psychiatric hospital
S = Suicide
SA = Suicide attempt
Famous People with Bipolar Disorder: Writers
Hans Christian Andersen
Honore de Balzac
James Barrie
Arthur Benson (H)
E.F. Benson
James Boswell
William Faulkner (H)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (H)
Lewis Grassic Gibbon (SA)
Nikolai Gogl
Maxim Gorky (SA)
Kenneth Graham
Graham Greene
Ernest Hemingway (H, S)
Hermann Hesse (H, SA)
Henrik Ibsen
William Inge (H, S)
Henry James
William James
Charles Lamb (H)
Malcolm Lowry (H, S)
John Bunyan
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Joseph Conrad (SA)
Charles Dickens
Isak Dinesen (SA)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Herman Melville
Eugene O'Neill (H, SA)
Francis Parkman
John Ruskin (H)
Mary Shelley
Jean Stafford (H)
Robert Louis Stevenson
August Strindberg
Leo Tolstoy
Ivan Turgenev
Tennessee Williams (H)
Mary Wollstonecraft (SA)
Virginia Woolf (H, S)
Emile Zola
Modified August 6, 2004
Famous Musicians & Composers with Bipolar Disorder
Anton Arensky
Hector Berlioz (SA)
Anton Bruckner (H)
Jeremiah Clarke (S)
John Dowland
Edward Elgar
Carlo Gesualdo
Mikhail Glinka
George Frederic Handel
Gustav Holst
Charles Ives
Otto Klemperer (H)
Orlando de Lassus
Gustav Mahler
Modest Mussorgsky
Sergey Rachmaninoff
Giocchino Rossini
Robert Schumann (H, SA)
Alexander Scriagbin
Peter Tchaikovsky
Peter Warlock (S)
Hugo Wolf (H, SA)
Bernd Alois Zimmerman (S)
Nonclassical composers and musicians:
Irving Berlin (H)
Noel Coward
Stephen Foster
Charles Mingus (H)
Charles Parker (H, SA)
Cole Porter (H)
Bud Powell (H)
Kurt Cobain, musician (Nirvana) (S 1994)
Modified August 6, 2004
Famous Poets with Bipolar Disorder:
Antonin Artaud (H)
Konstantin Batyushkov (H, SA)
Charles Baudelaire (SA)
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (S)
John Berryman (H, S)
William Blake
Aleksandr Blok
Barcroft Boake (S)
Louis Bogan (H)
Rupert Brooke
Robert Burns
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Thomas Campbell
Paul Celan (S)
Thomas Chatterton (S)
John Clare (H)
Harley Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Collins (H)
William Cowper (H, SA)
Hart Crane (S)
George Darley
John Davidson (S)
Emily Dickinson - more
Ernest Dowson
T.S. Eliot (H)
Sergey Esenin (S)
Robert Fergusson (H)
Afanasy Fet (SA)
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
Edward FitzGerald
John Gould Fletcher (S)
Gustaf Froding (SA, H)
Oliver Goldsmith
Adam Lindsay Gordon (S)
Thomas Gray
Nikolai Gumilyov (SA)
Robert Stephen Hawker
Friedrich Holderlin (H)
Gerard Manley Hopkins - More
Victor Hugo
Randal Jarrell (H, S)
Samuel Johnson
John Keats - More
Henry Kendall (H)
Velimir Khlebnikov (H)
Heinrich Von Kleist (S)
Walter Savage Landor
Nikolaus Lenau (H)
J.M.R. Lenz (SA)
Mikhail Lermontov
Vachel Lindsay (S)
James Russell Lowell
Robert Lowell (H)
Hugh MacDiarmid (H)
Louis MacNeice
Osip Mandelstam (H, SA)
James Clarence Mangan
Vladimir Mayakovsky (S)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (H)
Alfred de Musset
Gerard de Nerval (H, S)
Boris Pasternak (H)
Cesare Pavese (S)
Sylvia Plath (H, S)
Edgar Allan Poe (SA)
Ezra Pound (H)
Alexander Pushkin
Laura Riding (SA)
Theodore Roethke (H)
Delmore Schwartz (H)
Anne Sexton (H, S)
Percy Bysshe Shelley - More (SA)
Christopher Smart (H)
Torquato Tasso (H)
Sara Teasdale (H, S)
Alfred, Lord tennyson
Dylan Thomas
Edward Thomas
Francis Thompson
George Trakl (H, S)
Marina Tsvetayeva (S)
Walt Whitman - More
Famous Artists with Bipolar Disorder:
Ralph Barton (S)
Francesco Bassano (S)
Ralph Blakelock (H)
Francesco Borromini (S)
John Sell Cotman
Richard Dadd (H)
Edward Dayes (S)
Thomas Eakins
Paul Gauguin (SA)
Theodore Gericault
Hugo van der Goes
Vincent van Gogh (H, S)
Arshile Gorky (S)
Philip Guston (H)
Benjamin Haydon (S)
Carl Hill (H)
Ernst Josephson (H)
George Innes (SA)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (H, S)
Edwin Landseer (H)
Edward Lear
Wilhelm Lehmbruck (S)
John Martin
Charles Meryon (H)
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Adolphe Monticelli
Edvard Munch (H)
Jules Pascin (S)
Georgia O'Keeffe (H)
Raphaelle Peal (H)
Jackson Pollock (H)
George Romney
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (SA)
Mark Rothko (S)
Nicolas de Stael (S)
Pietro Testa (S)
Henry Tilson (S)
George Frederic Watts
Sir David Wilkie
Anders Zorn
This amazing list of famous people with bipolar disorder should clearly illustrate that were it not for Bipolar Disorder, most of the great artistic contributions to our society would never have existed.
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