Everybody experiences highs and lows of mood; for some they are more intense than others. Experiencing mania, hypomania or depression can have a significant impact on an individual’s behavior and ability to think clearly and patients exhibiting symptoms of these conditions are generally considered to be mentally ill.
Hypomania is also linked to other mood disorders such as cyclothymia and bipolar disorder II. But just as depression could be good for you, hypomania disorder may also be an evolutionary adaptation.
Mania and Hypomania
Mania was an Ancient Greek goddess, the deification of madness and rage. Today, the name is given to excessively high moods characterized by optimism, diminished sleep need and rapid, often disjointed thought patterns. Mania can lead to impaired judgment and self-destructive behavior such as addiction, while psychologists have shown that various cognitive functions are markedly affected during manic episodes.
Because of its ability to trigger potentially damaging behavior, mania is usually considered to be a symptom of mental illness. Hypomania, meanwhile, is mania in everything but intensity – the experience is similar but milder. People with hypomanic symptoms often profess to increased levels of creativity and productivity during hypomanic episodes, which has led some thinkers to consider the evolutionary benefits of hypomania itself.
The Hypomanic Edge
John Gartner, in his book The Hypomanic Edge, has even gone so far as the attribute the 20th century success of the United States to hypomania. His argument is that, as a colony, natural selection led to a higher than average number of hypomaniacs settled in the U.S. – those prepared to make the journey were by definition more disposed to take risks than those who were not.
Hypomanic personality traits were then passed down through the gene pool, contributing to a risk taking culture in the country as a whole. Americans are more prone to chase a crazy dream and challenge the status quo; this can lead to personal ruin, but it can also lead to progress on a larger scale. He also attributes larger scale market phenomena such as boom and bust cycles to hypomania; this, he argues, is the American Way.
Kuhn’s Paradigm Shifts
The success of the U.S. is unlikely to have been caused by a single factor but his work does strike chords with some existing social theory, particularly the branch of sociology in science that builds on the work of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Kuhn was an American social scientist who first coined the term ‘paradigm shift’. He argued that normal science operated within a static paradigm and only very occasionally was real progress made. Normal science were not seeking to challenge established knowledge but rather to build on it; but every now and then a rogue genius would make a discovery that shattered existing preconceptions and precipitate a paradigm shift. Discoveries such as gravity and bacteria were examples of ideas that caused ‘scientific revolutions’.
Hypomanic Genius
Kuhn’s work has been built on by a number of other thinkers – but what does it have to do with hypomania? Well, there are many great thinkers, such as Isaac Newton, who are said to have symptoms of hypomania disorder. Neither has hypomania been limited to science; other famous hypomanics include Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Vincent Van Gogh all displayed hypomanic traits.
If Kuhn is right and ‘normal’ thought does not lead to progress, then it takes abnormal thought – such as the increased creativity that many feel resulting from hypomanic moods – for progress to occur. Hypomania, and milder forms of bipolar disorder such as cylcothymia, could therefore be considered a great social good, a positive result of human evolution.
A Small Dose of Stress
One way to think about hypomania is to relate it to stress. Stress occurs when an individual is faced with a pressure situation and results from increased levels of hormones such as cortisol in the blood stream. In the short term, stress can increase our efficiency and performance, but in the long term it is detrimental to health.
Hypomania could be beneficial in the similar way to a small dose of stress – full blown mania would equate to a much larger one. In small doses, hypomania can make us more creative and help us to solve problems and make breakthroughs. In larger portions, however, it can damage our health and impair our judgment.
Anybody prone to hypomania will be familiar with the feeling of being on top of the world for no particular reason. For a while, it can help us to be productive in our lives. Experienced for too long, however, and it may lead to rash decision making, addiction and other self-destructive behavior. So while hypomania can really be good for you, it’s best to come down sooner rather than later.