[wrklvfhu] Bipolar disorder: evolution and society

Why is there suicide?

Certainly there is a biological component (neurotransmitters, etc.) to the feelings that drive people to suicide.  There seems to very likely be a genetic component as well.

But people who commit suicide are obviously less likely to pass their genes to the next generation.  Why hasn't evolution eliminated this already?

Hypothesize that most suicides are linked to bipolar disorder (manic depression), and more radically, that the reason the bipolar genes survive generation after generation is that they are not disadvantageous evolutionarily.

Something must be going on in the manic state to counterbalance the increased suicide rate during the depressive state.  Higher libido might be the obvious explanation.  Another might be that someone may appear more desirable as a mate: but how and why?

We now make that great leap in logic that bipolar, being not disadvantageous evolutionarily, is likewise advantageous for society.  Two reasons: while in the manic state, a bipolar person may produce good to society with an intensity simply inaccessible to "normal" people.  One wonders how much of the "inventions" of mankind we see around us every day were originally produced or conceived of in such a state -- mental health being such a taboo topic, we may never know.  I suspect "inspiration by a Muse" is this.

While manic, a bipolar person may also challenge the bounds of society's rules, though such behavior is often labled "destructive".  But challenging the boundaries is how society grows: it requires something extra to irrationally go beyond the overwhelming force of the status quo into which we "normal" people are rutted.

Nowadays we treat bipolar with medication to stabilize, perhaps to prevent the destruction of the status quo.  What would society be like if we accepted bipolar as part of "normal", mainly making effort to prevent self-injury while on the extreme ends of manic / depressive cycle?