"U.S. has highest bipolar rate in 11-nation study" 4.4% is a lifetime chance. The point prevalence measure is 2.8%.
People with Bipolar Disorder I are disproportionately represented in prison and jail populations. People with Bipolar II are frighteningly energetic and effective at what they do. Because this is an inherited problem I suspect the generally risk-taking Bipolars tend to immigrate to new places.
A little deeper in:
"The topic has been the subject of at least one book, "The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America," by John D. Gartner, Ph.D. Gartner, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, discusses the hypomanic qualities of entrepreneurs and leaders who took risks to come to America. (Hypomania is a milder form of mania in which a person feels exuberant and may be highly creative without losing touch with reality or experiencing psychosis, which can happen in some people with mania.)"
You don't have to be crazy to sell everything, leave your family and friends and get on a ship to someplace you've never been where they don't speak your language, but it helps.
ReplyDeleteStrikes me that, to come voluntarily, from wherever to North America, whether last year or three hundred years ago, took people from the top half or top third of the risk tolerance/avoidance scale. No scaredy-cats, but we did get frogs who weren't scared of the conclusion about this temperature thing going on.
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