Our method

Bipolar Lives is built around a simple principle:  document what can be established, and leave out what cannot.

The site brings together public, source-based accounts of people who have lived with bipolar disorder. Profiles are not diagnoses made by Bipolar Lives, and they are not attempts to reconstruct someone’s mental-health history from their behaviour.

How people are chosen

Bipolar Lives generally profiles people who meet two requirements.

First, there must be sufficiently strong public evidence that the person has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Second, there must be a reason for their story to be of public interest.

People may be included because they are:

• a public figure with a well-documented disclosure;
• an advocate who has spoken publicly about living with bipolar disorder;
• notable in their profession or field; or
• someone whose public disclosure provides an unusually useful or substantial account of living with the disorder.

Fame alone is not enough. A person is also not included simply because journalists, relatives, biographers, or members of the public have speculated that they may have had bipolar disorder.

When the evidence is contradictory, Bipolar Lives generally does not try to resolve the disagreement.

Kanye West is one example. He has publicly discussed having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but he has also publicly said that he was not bipolar and had been misdiagnosed. Because those statements conflict, his diagnosis has not been treated as sufficiently settled for a Bipolar Lives profile.

The purpose of the site is to document established information, not decide which competing diagnosis is correct.

Two types of profiles

Profiles generally fall into one of two categories.

Self-disclosed

A self-disclosed profile is used when the person has publicly identified themselves as having bipolar disorder.

This may come from an interview, memoir, essay, speech, podcast, social-media statement, documentary, or another attributable public source.

On these profiles, Bipolar Lives only describes experiences that the person has publicly disclosed or that reliable sources clearly document.

We do not infer symptoms, severity, psychosis, hospitalization, medication use, substance use, recovery, or other clinical details from someone’s behaviour.

If the person has never publicly discussed a particular aspect of their illness, the profile does not attempt to fill in the gap.

Historically documented

Some people, particularly historical figures, cannot self-disclose in the contemporary sense or lived during a period when different diagnostic terminology was used.

A profile may therefore be classified as historically documented when strong biographical, medical, archival, or other reliable historical evidence establishes the diagnosis.

These profiles are held to the same basic standard: speculation is not enough.

Where historical sources use terms such as manic-depressive illness, the profile may preserve that language while explaining its relationship to modern terminology.

Why some profiles say “bipolar disorder” and others say “Bipolar I disorder” or “Bipolar II disorder”

Bipolar Lives does not infer subtype.

A profile uses Bipolar I disorder or Bipolar II disorder only when a sufficiently reliable source specifically establishes that subtype.

If reliable sources establish a bipolar diagnosis but do not establish the subtype, the profile simply says bipolar disorder.

This is intentional. Symptoms described in an interview or biography may appear consistent with a particular subtype, but Bipolar Lives does not convert those descriptions into a diagnosis.

How profiles are written

Profiles are intended to be concise, readable accounts of both the person’s work and what they have publicly discussed about bipolar disorder.

They are not meant to be psychiatric case histories.

Each profile begins by establishing who the person is and why they are notable. Career and work comes before the mental-health sections, so the diagnosis does not become the person’s defining characteristic.

The bipolar-related portion of a profile may include:

• diagnosis and disclosure;
• experiences with mania, depression, psychosis, hospitalization, or disruption when publicly documented;
• treatment and management;
• recovery and periods of stability;
• advocacy and perspective; and
• a short quotation in the person’s own words.

Not every profile contains every section. Some people have spoken extensively about their experiences; others have disclosed little beyond their diagnosis.

A shorter profile is preferable to filling gaps with assumptions.

Sources and evidence

Claims are evaluated individually.

A source showing that someone has bipolar disorder does not automatically establish that they experienced psychosis, were hospitalized, used lithium, attempted suicide, or recovered because of a particular treatment. Those claims require their own evidence.

Whenever possible, Bipolar Lives prefers:

• the person’s own interviews, essays, books, speeches, or other statements for personal experiences;
• reputable journalism quoting the person directly;
• academic and institutional biographies;
• authoritative professional sources; and
• strong historical or biographical sources for people who are no longer living.

Sensitive claims receive particular scrutiny.

Before publication, important statements are checked against the underlying source rather than relying simply on summaries or citations copied from elsewhere.

What is left out

Public availability does not automatically make information relevant.

Profiles generally leave out private details about relationships, children, family conflict, trauma, substance use, suicide attempts, legal problems, or other sensitive subjects unless they are both reliably documented and materially relevant to the person’s publicly discussed experience with bipolar disorder.

The same rule applies to clinical interpretation.

Bipolar Lives does not diagnose people from their behaviour and does not speculate about:

• bipolar subtype;
• psychosis;
• treatment;
• medication;
• severity;
• causes of particular behaviour; or
• whether someone has “recovered.”

Professional success is also not treated as evidence of recovery or mild illness.

Why some profiles have portraits and others do not

Bipolar Lives does not use an image simply because one can be found online.

A portrait is added when a suitable source image can be identified with appropriate reuse rights, such as an openly licensed or public-domain image. Where applicable, the original source and licensing information are recorded.

Some of the portraits on Bipolar Lives are artistic adaptations of those source photographs so that images across the site share a consistent visual style.

For many people, particularly less prominent advocates, researchers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, no suitable reusable photograph is available.

In those cases, the profile is intentionally presented without a portrait rather than using an image whose reuse rights are unclear.

The presence or absence of an image has no relationship to the quality or importance of the profile.

Professions and fields

Professions describe the roles for which someone is meaningfully known. They are kept selective rather than attempting to list every job, credential, or activity a person has ever undertaken.

Fields are broader categories used to explore the collection. A person can belong to more than one field when their career genuinely spans different areas.

These classifications are navigation tools. They are not intended to define the person or imply that one career is more significant than another.

Quotations

Direct quotations are used sparingly.

The goal is not to collect memorable statements but to preserve a person’s own language when it adds something that paraphrasing would lose.

When an In their own words section appears, it generally contains a short quotation that meaningfully illustrates the person’s experience or perspective and can be traced directly to its source.

Corrections

Bipolar Lives is an evolving research project.

Sources disappear, better interviews become available, historical evidence can be clarified, and errors can occur. Profiles may therefore be revised when stronger evidence becomes available.

If a profile contains a factual error, an unsupported clinical statement, an incorrect diagnosis or subtype, a broken source, or an image attribution problem, corrections are welcome.