Substantial literature has linked bipolar disorder with creative accomplishment. Much of the thinking in this area has been inspired by biographical accounts of poets, musicians, and other highly accomplished groups, which frequently document signs of bipolar disorder in these samples. A smaller literature has examined quantitative measures of creativity among people with bipolar disorder or at risk for the disorder. In this paper, we provide a critical review of such evidence. We then consider putative mechanisms related to the link of bipolar disorder with creativity, by drawing on literature outside of bipolar disorder on personality, motivational, and affective predictors of creativity. Because so little research has directly evaluated whether these factors could help explain the elevations of creativity in bipolar disorder, we conclude with an agenda for future research on the theoretically and clinically compelling topic of creativity in bipolar disorder.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 158. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 August 2026.
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#1,112
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Outputs of similar age from Clinical Psychology Review
#1
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Altmetric has tracked 34,351,437 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,895 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 35.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 20 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its contemporaries.
