An American team used personality and temperament tests to examine three general groups of people: healthy artists, people with bipolar disorder, and healthy people in the general population. They found healthy artists to be more similar in personality to individuals with bipolar disorder than to healthy people in the general population.

"My hunch is that emotional range, having an emotional broadband, is the bipolar patient's advantage," said Connie Strong, a doctoral student and study presenter. "It isn't the only thing going on, but something gives people with manic depression an edge, and I think it is emotional range."

The current study is groundbreaking for psychiatric research in that it used two separate control groups made up of healthy, creative people and healthy people from the general population.

Researchers administered standard personality, temperament, and creativity tests to 47 people in the healthy control group, 48 patients with successfully treated bipolar disorder, and 25 patients successfully treated for depression. They also tested 32 people in a healthy, creative control group composed of graduate students enrolled in prestigious product design, creative writing, and fine arts programs. All subjects were matched for age, gender, education, and socioeconomic status.

Preliminary analysis showed that people in the control group and persons in remission from bipolar disorder were more open and likely to be moody and neurotic than healthy controls. Moodiness and neuroticism are part of a group of characteristics researchers are calling "negative-affective traits," which also include mild, nonclinical forms of depression and bipolar disorder.

Although the data are preliminary, they provide a roadmap for psychiatric researchers interesting in exploring the genius/illness paradox demonstrated in the life of mathematician and Nobel Laureate John Forbes Nash, Jr.. The existing data need further review, Strong said. "And, we need to expand this to other groups."