Famous Manic Depressives
Papa Red
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 redated 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
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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
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Composers
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)
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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) =-=-=-=-=-=
Poets
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
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
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 (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
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Artists
Ralph Barton (S)
Francesco Bassano (S)
Ralph Blakelock (H)
David Bomberg
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
Adolphe Monticelli
Edvard Meunch (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
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Family Ties
Here are a couple of more paragraphs, from pages 236 - 237 of "Touched
With Fire; Manic-Depressive Ilness and the Artistic Temperament." [she
writes about the family trees of afflicted people] "All these pedigrees
demonstrate the wide range of expression of a genetic illness, from its
milder forms, which can appear as temperaments, to the more psychotic
and suicidal forms that appear as full-blown manic depressive insanity.
"Obviously, many other writers, artists, and composers had family
members who suffered from manic-depressive illness or severe recurrent
depressions, were declared insane and committed to asylums or hospitals,
or committed suicide. Those with at least ONE SERIOUSLY AFFECTED
FIRST-DEGREE RELATIVE (often there were several include):
Hans Christian Andersen
Konstantin Batyushkov
Arthur and E.F. Benson
Elizabeth Bishop
Aleksandr Blok
Charlotte and Emily Bronte
Anton Bruckner
Thomas Campbell
Thomas Chatterton
Samuel Clemens
John Sell Cotman
Gustave Courbet
Richard Dadd
Isak Dinesen
Ernest Dowson
Thomas Eakins
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edward FitzGerald
Robert Frost
Thomas Gainsborough
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Nikolai Gogol
Kenneth Graham
Thomas Gray
Hermann Hesse
Charles Lamb
Louis MacNeice
John Martin
Marianne Moore
Edvard Meunch
Francis Parkman
Walker Percy
Sylvia Plath
Jackson Pollock
Cole Porter
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Giocchino Rossini
John Rishkin
Alexander Scriabin
Robert Louis Stevenson
Peter Tchaikovsky
J.M.W. Turner
Walt Whitman
Emile Zola
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"These findings are consistent with those of Dr.S Andreasen, McNeil,
Richards, and Karlsson (chapter 3) showing that mental illness and
creativity tend to aggregate in certain families and not in others. The
high rates of mood disorders and suicide in the literary and artistic
families portrayed in this chapter are also consistent with studies
showing greatly increased rates of manic depressive and depressive
illness in the first degree relatives of individuals who have manic
depressive illness.
"It is important to emphasize, however, that many writers and artists
have no family history of these illnesses, nor do they themselves suffer
from depression or manic depressive illness. This point is critical. The
basic argument of this book is not that all writers and artists are
depressed, suicidal, or manic. It is, rather, that a greatly
disproportionate number of them are; that the manic depressive and
artistic temperaments are causally related to one another. The genetic
basis of manic depressive illness provides not only one part of this
argument, but also the constitutional core of a determining temperament,
one providing in part the sealed orders with which so many sail."
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2>Living bi-polars
Here is my ongoing list of famous LIVING bipolars (manic depressives)
and famous LIVING unipolars (depression only). Famous Living Bipolars
This list is being compiled gradually as people who are bipolar release
this information to the public. The following individuals have stated
publicly that they are 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
[Country] Charley Pride, musician
Axl Rose, musician
John Strugnell, Biblical scholar, Harvard Ted Turner, entrepreneur,
media giant (U.S.) Jonathon Winters, comedian, actor, writer, artist
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Famous Living Unipolars
These people have said publicly that they have had episodes of
depression:
Buzz Aldrin, astronaut
Rona Barrett, entertainment reporter, author Art Buchwald, writer
Barbara Bush, former First Lady (U.S.)
Ray Charles, musician
Eric Clapton, musician
Dick Clark, television personality (American Bandstand)
Leonard Cohen, musician, writer
Francis Ford Coppola, director
Michael Crichton, writer
Kathy Conkrite, writer (daughter of Walter Conkrite)
Sheryl Crow, musician
Mike Douglas, media personality
Tony Dow, actor, director
Thomas Eagleton, former politician; professor James Farmer, civil rights
activist (1960s to present)
Jules Feiffer, playwright, screenwriter, cartoonist
Albert French, writer
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist, educator, author Mariette Hartley,
actor
Stephen Hawking, physicist{world's smartest man]
Anthony Hopkins, actor
Salvador Luria, scientist (bacterial genetics), Nobel Laureate
Robert McFarlane, former National Security Advisor (U.S.)
Sarah McLachlan, musician
Charley Pell, former coach, Univ of Florida
Bonnie Raitt, musician
Joan Rivers, comedienne, talk show host
Roseanne, actor, writer, comedienne, also has MPD & OCD
Linda Sexton, writer (daughter of Anne Sexton)
Rod Steiger, actor
William Styron, writer
Kate Taylor, musician
James Taylor, musician
Livingston Taylor, musician
Mike Wallace, news anchor