IrishMedicalNews

Higher intelligence bipolar risk

Written by Lloyd Mudiwa Monday, 08 February 2010 12:10

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High grade performing students have a much higher risk of developing bipolar disorder than those who get average grades, according to new research.

The study, published in the February issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, supports the belief that exceptional intellectual ability is associated with bipolar disorder.

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, teamed up with researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden to investigate the association further.

The team used the Swedish national school register to obtain the grades of all students graduating from compulsory education between 1988 and 1997.

The researchers then used the Swedish hospital discharge register to test associations between the students’ academic achievement and admission to hospital with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder between the ages of 17 and 31. A total of 713,876 individuals were included in the study.

They found that students with excellent school performance were almost four times as likely to develop bipolar disorder as adults, compared to those with average grades. This increased risk remained after the researchers controlled for other factors such as parental education and socioeconomic status.

Students with the poorest grades were also at a moderately increased risk of bipolar disorder. They were almost twice as likely to develop bipolar compared to those with average grades.

“A” grades in Swedish and Music had particularly strong associations, supporting the literature which consistently finds associations between linguistic and musical creativity and bipolar disorder.