Did Burns have bipolar disorder?

● Team study poet’s letters and diaries to develop picture of his mental wellbeing

Analysis of letters and journals written by Robert Burns suggest he had bipolar disorder, according to researchers.

A team from the University of Glasgow said they uncovered evidence of the Bard’s moods cycling between “depression and hypomania” in his work and claim the disorder could explain his periods of intense creativity and unstable love life.

The project looked at 800 letters written over nine years, using modern psychiatry methods to analyse Burns’s state of mind.

His poems distilled great emotion in just a handful of words, while his chaotic private life has long fascinated his fans.

Now academics studying the mental state of Robert Burns claim that Scotland’s national bard may have had bipolar disorder even as he embraced success as a poet.

Academics at Glasgow University have studied more than 800 letters and journal entries to analyse Burns’s mental wellbeing in the latter part of his life.

Details known about his relationships and day-to-day experiences have also been examined in an effort to estab- lish whether or not he had a psychiatric disorder.

The research team at Glasgow University now claims to have some evidence to suggest that Burns may have suffered from bipolar disorder, with his moods cycling between depression and mania.

Such a diagnosis might explain the writer’s periods of intense creativity, temperamental personality and unstable love life, the research team said.

The findings have been published in the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in a paper entitled Mood Disorder in the Personal Correspondence of Robert Burns: Testing a Novel Interdisciplinary Approach.

Moira Hansen, of the school of critical studies at Glasgow University, is the principal researcher on the project. She said: “‘Blue devilism’ was the term Burns used to describe periods of depression which he suffered; periods which affected his life and his work – not something you would automatically expect of someone with a worldwide reputation for knowing how to enjoy himself – and something that our project is properly studying for the first time.

“We have pinpointed evidence which showed bouts of increased energy and hyperactivity, and periods of depression and a withdrawal from day-to-day life.

“Further work to take account of the conventions of letter writing in the 18th century, who Burns was addressing his letters to, and the different activities he was involved in at the various stages of his life is still being carried out.

“But we now believe Burns may have had what we would recognised today as bipolar disorder.”

The study looked at blocks of letters across four separate time frames over nine years from 1786 to 1795, the year before his death.

One set covered a threemonth period around the end of 1793, a known period of melancholia or depression identified by Burns in his writing.

At this time Burns’s letters show him feeling “altogether Novemberish, a damn’d melange of fretfulness and melancholy … my soul flouncing & fluttering”.

This sample acted as a base to show symptoms of lowered mood, mild depression and melancholia, with two of the letters meeting the criteria for clinical depression.

Ms Hansen said further work will be done to create a “mood map” of Burns’s life to chart how his highs and lows linked to events in his private and public life, and how his state of mind had an impact on his writing.