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My mother was bipolar and there was no upside to this disorder for her. She had long cycles of depression (6 months to 18 months) and very short intense manic periods where she spent all of her available money and talked about conspiracies as if they were real.

I can imagine that a bipolar individual with less deep cycles might get inspiration to innovate during the manic periods.

The list of well know people that were or are bipolar is remarkable for the creativity on the list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_bipolar_di...

Maybe my mother was just not one of the lucky ones.

Thank you for sharing this. I am a bit worried about "benefits of mental illness" posts, but I think you managed to strike the balance between recognising that sometimes mental illness is devastating, and sometimes it's okay.

I liked the nuanced comments about medication. I'm a bit concerned about #medicatedandmighty - it's great that those people feel that, but I don't, and I want to be able to say that I dislike this or that medication.

I'm really interested in experiences of mental ill-health stigma from other countries (I'm in UK), so I found this post useful.