I'd like to just briefly touch upon this idea that certain occupations are associated with a higher incidence of bipolar depression . And in fact , it's been explored at a research level .
Really , there are data pointing to the fact that certain individuals of certain occupations tend to be more creative and that creativity is associated with . Again , associate this isn't causal , it's associated or correlated with higher levels or incidents of bipolar depression and maybe even other forms of depression . So this is a study looking at mood disorders in eminent individuals .
Uh I will post this or I'll post a link to it in the show note captions for you to peruse . But I'll just give you a sense of the extremes on this graph because they're very interesting turns out that if you were to look at the profession or I should say among the professions they looked at in this study because they didn't look at all professions , those in the military and those who are professional athletes or had jobs in the social or natural sciences had the of those there was a lower percentage of those that had depression or mania . In some cases , like those who are professional athletes didn't seem to have , there was no incidence of mania at least in this data set .
Certainly we're not saying that it's not that being a poet is gonna give you depression . But it turns out that people with depression and people with depression and mania seem to gravitate towards poetry or at least are very successful at poetry . Again , associative correlative , no causal relationship here .
Or that being manic is a good thing ? Again , we return to the basic foundational criteria for bipolar disorder and major depression , which is that the pressured speech , the not sleeping , the incredible increases in energy and the flights of ideas are generally not going to lead or I think it's fair to say are not going to lead to good places , in fact , often lead to bad places . But we would also be wrong if we didn't consider the fact that there is a somewhat inextricable relationship between mania and creativity .