My younger brother has bipolar disorder (along with ADD and several other disorders), and growing up with him has made me worry that my own children will be as difficult to raise as he was and is. So of course reading this, "In other words, the genetic link doesn't mean that one bipolar parent or even two will necessarily produce a bipolar child," made me feel a little bit better about the idea of raising my own offspring. (http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20275258,00.html)
I guess that this comes back to the nature vs nurture argument - it may be in my brother's nature to be bipolar, ADD, and generally crazy (my future offspring being similar, potentially), but with my families support and resources, he will probably be able to live a close to normal and stable life.
But hey, here's an article on psychologytoday.com that says we need a bipolar preseident : http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bipolar-advantage/201108/we-need-bipolar-president, so maybe my brother or future children could actually be the next president! But my science-senses are tingling - the article claims that empathy and realism are heightened by depression, creativity by mania, and resilience by both. The person claiming these things wrote a book saying that people like MLK Jr and JFK were great because they had mental illnesses. This sounds a lot like pop psych to me, and sells books by validating people who have or think that they have mental illness or even their children. Like my dad - he's convinced that his ADD helps him run a company - that his ADD is actually an ability to jump from one thing to another. I would lecture my whole family on causality vs correlation, but I figure it's a lost cause.
Nice thoughts and analysis of the articles...I have heard the connection between mental illness and certain traits as well...What I liked about the Psychology Today article was this quote: Those of us who have done the work to change our bipolar condition from disorder to IN order can be tremendous assets to society instead of burdens. It seems to imply that those who are able to adjust to and thrive after having a mental disorder are able to contribute hugely to society. Not sure what sort of evidence there is, as you said, the book is based on retrospective reports that these people even had mental disorders...But who knows? It is somewhat comforting for me to know that people are looking at mental illness as assets rather than horrible, awful, incurable things...Which is what the majority of society thinks.