“Bipolar disorder: The highest highs, the lowest lows - Robert Westhead”

It’s become an occupational hazard for celebrities. But what’s it really like to live with bipolar disorder? Robert Westhead, trustee of Stand to Reason, describes how the disease turned his life into a roller-coaster ride.

Gail Porter has it. Stephen Fry made a documentary about it. Sophie Anderton, Adam Ant, Russell Brand, Richard Dreyfuss, Kerry Katona and Tony Slattery are all sufferers. And now Britney, too, has bipolar disorder, at least according to the media, in whose unforgiving glare she has undergone her very public meltdown.

At times, it seems as though bipolar illness is the latest celebrity fad – like wheat intolerance, perhaps. But the apparent spike in celebrity sufferers points to something else: that awareness amongst both clinicians and the public is growing and some of the stigma attached to admitting to mental health problems has begun to diminish.

I used to do some extremely odd things during my manic episodes, when you feel euphoric, disinhibited, full of energy and talk non-stop. Once I went charging back to my school, two years after leaving it. I went bursting into classrooms, interrupting lessons and generally causing havoc. I barged my way into a physics lesson and started pontificating to the class, as my old physics teacher looked on in horror. I did the same thing at a management consultancy I worked at briefly, storming in there and talking excitedly to everyone, a crowd gathering around me….

Read the full text of Robert’s personal story, as told to Dan Roberts in the article that appeared in the Independent on 19 February 2008, and is available online link