One writer reflects on bipolar disorder, Van Gogh, and the hard-won stability that makes creativity feel safer.
By the time I was 16 years old, I’d convinced myself that I was a creative genius. I knew nothing yet of bipolar disorder, but the budding manias of my teenage years had flowered into an obsessive pursuit of literary greatness.
Inspired by poets like William Blake and Emily Dickinson, I wrote constantly, often into the early-morning hours. After writing page after page in my journals, I shoved the pieces of paper into my very own secret box. When I think about those years, and then the eventual tumultuous years of my early twenties, I often ask myself: Was such intense creativity the result of bipolar mania? Or was bipolar mania the result of creativity?
I ask the same question when I consider the lives and artistic contributions of the many great poets, writers, musicians, and fine artists who likely lived with bipolar disorder.
Vincent van Gogh and Bipolar Disorder
On March 30th, when we bring awareness to this brain-based disorder for World Bipolar Day, we also honor the memory of Vincent van Gogh, whose birthday falls on the same date. As many scholars believe, Van Gogh — the epitome of the “mad artist” and creative genius — most likely had untreated bipolar 1 disorder throughout his life. For him, and for many other artists, so-called “madness” and creativity have stayed inextricably linked.
The Link Between Creativity and My Bipolar Journey
Creative writing has often saved me, but the sheer force of one of my surges of creative energy has also knocked me sideways. For several years after my teenage obsession with becoming the greatest writer who ever lived, I simply wouldn’t write. Again, creativity led to mania — or mania led to creativity — but either way, I knew what might follow the great expansiveness of my thoughts while writing.
When I wrote, I probed unexplored corners of my mind, where chaos and creativity hid together; and I had quickly learned that this kind of exploration ultimately led to the confusion and pain of mania or depression.
For me, normal functioning leaves me in a known, common area of my mind, where I experience the more predictable emotions and thoughts of everyday life.
When I’m highly creative, or at certain times when I’m rapid cycling, I often explore areas of my mind that are usually inaccessible — whether or not I want to. Somehow, during these times, I can move beyond the cognitive firewalls that we have installed in our minds for our own safety.
Managing the Challenges of Creative Energy
The act of creating is the act of accessing what we usually call the “imagination,” to find ideas beyond what we can simply discover with our own senses.
Great artists and writers throughout history who may have had bipolar, like Van Gogh and Blake, made their contributions to art by accessing these farther reaches of the mind, but their periods of creative productivity were also shaded by periods of extreme pain.
In my life, my poetry and my work in literary nonfiction got me into graduate school for creative writing — twice. Although I could craft the poems and the memoir that resulted in my admission, I couldn’t maintain my ability to function at that level, because my bipolar was unmanaged. In one case, I didn’t enroll; and in the other, ten years after that first admission to graduate school, I resigned.
Accessing Creativity Without Triggering Mania
I believe there’s a place of enchantment somewhere along the arc of a bipolar mood episode. For me, it can be a place of creative magic, when I’m elevated and exploring my imagination but haven’t yet gone too far.
I’ve learned that I can’t create when I’m simply trying to survive — when my mood swings are out of control. I have also learned, after many years, that creativity does not have to lead to mania, and mania does not always lead to creativity.
Celebrating Hope on World Bipolar Day
As we celebrate World Bipolar Day 2026, I reflect on how far I’ve come in balancing my creative spirit with my need for stability. By honoring figures like Van Gogh, we recognize the beauty in our unique perspectives while prioritizing the health that allows us to keep creating. Stability doesn’t mean the end of imagination; it means having the foundation to safely share that imagination with the world.
UPDATED: Originally posted on March 29, 2018
