"Churchill's Achievements Were Because of His Bipolar Disorder" with James Ricciardi

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1:30Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

2:04Anyways, let's get to it.

2:13Joining us now is James Ricciardi. He's a mental health historian and he's a former partner at McGuire Woods LLP. Not a book, but it's an article that drew my attention. It's about mental illness and highly successful persons, which I believe, by the way, Jim. So I would like to first go to your background. You graduated from Harvard. You were named one of the best lawyers in America, working on cases like Enron. But let's start with your background, And then we're going to go into some of the insights that you have about some leaders and how there's a close connection between genius, mental illness and leadership.

2:56But let's go to your background first, sir, because I want to establish your gravitas. OK, well, I have a computer science degree from Ohio State. As you do, I have a Harvard law degree. And as you did, I didn't go immediately into practicing law. I went into business, and I wound up as a vice president and general counsel of an industrial conglomerate in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The company wound up in a three-year Chapter 11 case, and I hired an outstanding New York bankruptcy counsel. And during those three years, I learned a lot about bankruptcy. And so I decided I finally found something in the law that I liked.

3:40so I called a very good friend of mine who I'd gone to Harvard with and said you know Connor I think I really like this bankruptcy stuff and he said well you know we're just starting a bankruptcy department in our New York office why don't you come in for a day of interviews I'll set it up for you so to make a long story short that's how I got my first job practicing law at the age of 37 and I only had taken a bar exam in New Jersey, but now I was practicing in New York. And you know New York and New Jersey don't reciprocate. So I had to take 17 years out of law school the bar exam in New York State, which is one of the hardest.

4:19Well, you passed it, and you're obviously an incredibly smart person, but you have your own mental health journey. And what I love about your story, if you don't mind me saying this, is that we sometimes have a stigma associated with mental health. We see it not for what it actually is. It's an illness like any other illness we may have. I have a bad heart. I take cholesterol medication. If there's something related to my mood, it could be biological more than anything else. And sometimes we attribute it to conscious behavioralism when it could, in fact just be biological. So I want you to talk about first, if you don't mind, your personal story, your own personal mental health journey, and some of the revelations that you've discovered as a result of your own journey, and what caused you to want to write this article that you've put together.

5:14And then we're going to go over some examples. You're right. I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder more than 40 years ago. And I've had many episodes. They were almost always manic depressive episodes. And what I mean by that is I would have a mania first, and the mania would inevitably wind up in a depression. And for those of your listeners or viewers who don't know really what manias and depressions are, I'll take a minute or two to explain that. A mania is when your mind tends to focus on only one idea or only one very small subset of ideas. If you are, say, a mathematician, you might focus on the solution of a problem that has escaped solution for 200 years, and you might focus exclusively on that, and you will become irresponsible towards your friends, irresponsible towards your co-workers.

6:20You will become very irritable. You won't sleep, but you won't sleep not because you're depressed. You won't sleep because all of your energy is being put into solving that one problem. And you may or may not solve that problem, but inevitably your mania is going to end up in a suicidal depression if you have bipolar disorder. And that was what always got me because I didn't only work for McGuire Woods. I worked for two other leading law firms before that. And every time I made a move, it was because I had a manic depressive episode. And either the managements of the firms really didn't want to deal with it because, you know, mental illness is not as important as physical illness.

7:09or I myself couldn't deal with it and I took myself out of the workforce for six months or a year and had to really struggle to get back. Now, the depressive side of it is almost always suicidal, but there are other aspects to depression. Also, you can't sleep, but it's not for the same reason as you can't sleep during a mania. You can't sleep in depression because you have constant feelings of worthlessness. Everything, every future moment seems black. You don't see any way out of the situation that you're in. And it could be triggered by something like what triggered Winston Churchill, or it could be triggered by nothing.

7:52And mostly it's triggered by a mania that happens before. But not to interrupt you, and I don't know as much about this as I should, frankly.

8:05is it chemical? Is it environmental? Neuroscientists almost exclusively believe today that it is biological, electrochemical, and neurological. And all three of those things can be influenced by the genetic makeup of the person. For example, a person that has a predisposition to breast cancer. That predisposition is genetic. A person can have a genetic predisposition to bipolar disorder. A person can have a genetic predisposition to depression. You know, a person can have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia. Now, schizophrenia is in a different league, so we won't talk about that. Right.

8:49Because that makes life almost impossible. You know, depression and bipolar disorder can be treated, but schizophrenia is almost impossible to deal with. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. Listen, I appreciate you bringing this up, and I appreciate the also respect the vulnerability associated with it because it can be, listen, 100 years ago this was very stigmatizing. Today it's less so as we understand more about the illness. The term in some ways is self-stigmatizing, but you have made enormous progress and you've also, if you don't mind me saying this, sir, I appreciate you coming on because there's lots of people that have this affliction and it's important for us to dispel all of the stigmas associated with it.

9:45I don't know if you remember Mike Wallace, my friend Chris Wallace's dad was the famous reporter from 60 Minutes. He had this issue. He fought this issue. But his openness probably led to more people getting help associated with this. So I appreciate you coming on. But you have a – I'd say it's a breakthrough, but you have a historical observation, which I think is worth talking about. And this is you've identified several leaders. I'm going to list some of them. Churchill, you've already mentioned. Lyndon Johnson, Thomas Eagleton. Well, we can talk a little bit about him. He was the vice president that vice presidential candidate that underwent electroshock therapy, a result of which he dropped out of the 1972 race.

10:35He was George McGovern selection to be vice president. John Fetterman, which we we know is in the Senate representing Pennsylvania. by his own admission has talked about this situation that's plaguing him. The legendary Ted Turner, Mariah Carey, Francis Ford Coppola, Ernest Hemingway. I don't want to steal your thunder, sir. Tell us about these people, these specific individuals, also the observations that you've made about them, but also you have lots of empathy for them because some of the elements that they have, you have. So tell us about these people. Well, first, I'd like to talk for a minute about mental stigma.

11:19You know, mental illness was first identified by Plato and Hippocrates. So we've been dealing with this distinction between mental illness and physical illness for millennia. Millennia. And you said we've made a lot of progress in reducing stigma of mental illness. I would like to challenge that. I think we've made a little bit of progress. And let me give you an example. Mental illness, of course, by its very semantic presentation, distinguishes itself from physical illness. And because of its history, going back to Plato and Hippocrates, it also is perceived as a lesser illness than physical illness.

12:05But you mentioned John Fetterman, and John Fetterman is a very interesting case. because while he was in the campaign for president, I mean, for a senator from Pennsylvania, he had a stroke. You may remember he had a serious stroke. And after he won, a few weeks after he got to Washington, he was hospitalized for 42 days for major depression, 42 days. Now, when I was hospitalized, once I was hospitalized after a suicide attempt, I was in the hospital for 12 days. He was in the hospital 42 days. So you know he had very, very serious major depression. But he never suffered any stigma. His colleagues in the Senate supported him.

12:52His family supported him. His doctors supported him. His constituents supported him. Why is that? Okay. Now, to me, why that is, is because all of his doctors associated his major depression with his stroke. So they made it a physical illness. That's why he had no stigma. They made it a physical illness. Just as if a person behaved in a manic fashion, but had a brain tumor, and the brain tumor was removed, and then they were their old self again. There would be no stigma. But if they recovered from a mania that couldn't be associated with a physical illness, the stigma, you know, remained. It's a very good distinction.

13:37It's a very important point that you're making. But let's talk about a few of these political leaders, sir, that have no stroke. They've had no physical m 'lady, but they have forms of depression. You know, we believe that Lincoln had it. Let's talk about Lyndon Johnson as an example, or Winston Churchill, some of the people you write about. Let's talk about Winston Churchill and Lyndon Johnson. And Anthony, you make me feel old when you call me sir. Call me Jim, please. I'll call you Jim. I'm sorry. I'll call you Jim. All right. So Jim, let's talk about these guys. All right. Winston Churchill in 1945, after he's widely acclaimed as the hero of World War II, his party loses an election for control of Parliament.

14:25And you know the way things work in Great Britain. You lose an election for control of Parliament and the Prime Minister has to resign because the new control party picks the Prime Minister. So after his years of being hailed as a hero, he's suddenly out of government. And almost immediately he goes into a depression. And he's unique because we have a book written by his personal physician, Lord Moran, who details his depression. He details his depression. He details aspects of his bipolar disorder. And so another psychiatrist and historian, Anthony Storr, in reviewing Lord Moran's book and in reviewing records that became available only after Churchill's death, he says, you know, I think that Churchill's achievements were not in spite of his bipolar disorder, but because of his bipolar disorder, which brings us back to what I was saying about tunneling and focusing on really important things and being able to solve really important problems, even though the rest of the world you treat like hell, you know, and that's probably as good an explanation of Winston Churchill's life as anything.

15:51And it comes directly from the horse's mouth, his personal physician who treated him for years. And his book was written only after Winston Churchill's death. Now, Lyndon Johnson is a little bit different situation because he never had a contemporaneous diagnosis of either depression or bipolar disorder. But I need to set the scene for you a little bit to understand why I included him in the list of people. In 1964, he won 61 % of the popular vote, which remains to today the greatest share of the popular vote ever won by a president since 1820. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS.

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17:46From afternoon coffee runs to stocking office supplies and even team dinners, you can earn miles on all your business expenses. Plus, you can earn 125 ,000 bonus miles for a limited time through October 29th. The Delta Sky Miles Reserve Business card. If you travel, you know. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Offer ends October 29th, 2025. Shortly afterwards in 1965, he has gallbladder surgery. And Lady Bird Johnson kept a diary of every day of his presidency. So from November 22, 1963, to January 20, 1969, she's got a daily diary. So she was staying with him. Gallbladder surgery was more complicated then than it is today.

18:34So he was in the hospital for like a week. And she stayed with him most days. But she goes out one day, as she says, to do some errands. Okay. So when she comes back, it's dusk. And she finds Lyndon Johnson with his good friend, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who he had put on the court, but with whom he had had a 30-year relationship. and he's telling Justice Fortas, you know, I want to go back to my ranch in Texas. I don't even want to talk to Vice President Humphrey. I don't want him to be able to call me. I know they'll probably want to impeach me. They'll probably demand my resignation, but that's just, that's where I'm at.

19:19And in the middle of this conversation, Lady Bird walks in and she's like, oh, this is like an avalanche has just fallen on my husband. She says the black beast of depression is back again. So she's telling us this isn't the first time that Lyndon Johnson has behaved this way. And he's behaved this way when he's on top of the world. So it's different from Winston Churchill. It's completely different from Winston Churchill, which is what convinced me that he had major depression, as defined by the National Institute of Mental Health. And there's actually more evidence. It's Bill Moyers, who was special assistant to the president and then press secretary to the president, and as we know, was the host of a show on PBS for about 30 years.

20:09He says that, you know, the night that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, which many people have called the Bill of the Century, you know, there were accolades coming in from all corners. all the TV stations were saying how historic it was. He wasn't down on the first floor with the staff and the senators and everybody in the celebration. So I went to look for him and I found him in his room in bed, depressed, and he didn't want to get out of bed to go downstairs to join the celebration. So there's another, you know, like super achievement and he's depressed. You know, there are instances of manic behavior that are that are recounted by Jack Valenti and Joe Califano.

21:02And interestingly enough, the last volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson was published in 2012. And all of the information I have gotten comes from books that were published after that. In fact, Lady Bird's diary was not even made public to researchers until 2017. And Hiding in Plain Sight was published in 2021. So all of the information I'm giving you was never available to anybody who wrote a biography of Lyndon Johnson before that. There's another very interesting thing about it. You know, he made a speech, his first speech to a joint session of Congress on November 27, 1963, five days after President Kennedy's assassination.

21:54And he spoke about President Kennedy and President Kennedy's assassination. And he spent a lot of time talking about the Civil Rights Bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But he also asked Congress for an all out attack on mental illness. He's the first U.S. president that ever asked Congress to do anything about mental illness. Is it self-referential? Who knows? Right. Yeah, but I think I think I think it's it's an amazing story about his life. If you don't mind, go to some people that are contemporary, like Mariah Carey or Francis Coppola, the director of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, et cetera.

22:40Tell us some of your insights there. If you permit me, you know, my paper, as you once described, it was a research paper. I've continued to do research, and I'd like to make a little detour. Yeah, you got mad at me. All I was saying is it's a great paper, but I want it. It's got to go this way. It's got to go bigger so it can be bolder. It's in the middle. Unfortunately, in our society, you've got to go one way or the other. I want you to turn this into a book. Well, it might be going to a book. Instead of talking about Francis Ford Coppola or Mariah Carey, I'd like to talk about two other people with your permission.

23:18Kay Jameson and Kurt Cobain. Perfect. Kay Jameson is the Dalio Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. She has been afflicted with bipolar disorder from early adulthood. So she is a remarkable person because she has the personal experience and the academic experience. and she actually, her second husband was a psychiatrist who worked for the National Institute of Mental Health and they co-wrote a book about her bipolar disorder and how he helped her get through her worst episodes. So she's really a remarkable person. There are very few people that have both been the victim of a disease and also the person who studies and helps with the treatment of the same disease.

24:18And she reviewed Kurt Cobain's suicide. And we learned that Beverly Cobain, who was a registered nurse and the first cousin of Cobain, told her that he had been diagnosed as a young child with ADD and later with bipolar disorder. So she went in and reviewed the history of his medical records and the history of his family and found a family full of bipolar disorder. Going back to grandparents, great-grandparents, and it's consistent with what we discussed before, the genetic aspect of bipolar disorder and depression. And it's just, it gives one pause. And she also said something, she followed up on something you said, Anthony, which is that she believes, and she says this is anecdotal, she's never done any scientific studies on it.

25:29But she believes that bipolar disorder runs in high-achieving and high-creative families. It's just her experience from having done so much research on so many people who had bipolar disorder. So I'd like to finish with stigmatization on mental health. Number one, as you pointed out, mental health, mental illness distinguishes itself from physical illness. And let's just think about somebody who has a broken leg. Nobody ever says, oh, you don't need treatment. Don't go to the hospital. But if you're depressed and you tell somebody you're depressed, maybe your husband or your son or your parents or your friends, they say, ah, you know, everybody gets depressed.

26:20Don't worry about it. You know, just think positive thoughts. You'll be fine in a couple of weeks. And a couple of weeks goes by, and you're not fine. You're worse. And you're not sleeping, and all you can see is black. And you tell everybody you're depressed, and they say, oh, just give it another couple of weeks. Everything will be fine. So, you know, if it's a broken leg, you go right away to the hospital. If you're depressed or you're manic, people try and talk you out of it. So that tells you it's a lesser disease in the minds of people. And that has tremendously negative effects. It discourages people from getting treatment.

26:56It oftentimes winds up getting people fired or they quit. Your relationships go south because you're not doing what everybody else wants you to do. And it's very difficult to recover those relationships. And mass media really doesn't do anything to help. I mean, virtually the only time you see mass media talk about mental illness is in connection with a mass shooting or a famous person's suicide. And those aren't two things that encourage people to seek mental health help, you know. And they put a suicide hotline on at a time when they're not really encouraging people because who wants to think of themselves as a mass murderer?

27:38You know, who wants to think of themselves as being ready to commit suicide? So if the mainstream media really wanted to do something, they would put public service announcements on every day. They don't have to be more than 15 seconds. They just throw the same number. They say, if you're feeling bad mentally for whatever reason, call this number. Don't associate it with mass murders and with famous people's suicides. so in a nutshell i can see we're coming up to 10 30 if you have no it's uh it's uh it's very it's very poignant and i wanted to i don't like interrupting when someone is uh eliciting as brilliantly as you are i have five words if you listen to any of our podcasts After reading your text, my producer and I come up with five words, and then we're going to ask you to respond to those words quickly.

28:39Okay, you ready? I say the words brain health. What do you think of, Jim? I think really of brain disease. I think it's more important to think about brain disease than brain health because brain health is a normal condition. Okay. What about the words mental illness? I say the word mental illness. You think what? So mental illness, I think, climate change. I think we've got to change it to brain disease, but it's not a task, an easy task. It's going to take decades, just like it's going to take decades to solve the climate change problem. Okay, it's a good point. And so that's at the least of my next word, which is stigma.

29:17Stigma has got to be reduced, but people talk about reducing stigma, but don't understand how to reduce stigma. That's what I'm saying about the mass media. All right. I'm going to say the word success. What do you think of? That there are many successful people who have dealt with serious mental illness or brain disease that we never know about. Because it's not something people talk about. Yeah. What about you, Jim? I say Jim Rashardi. What do you think of? I think that I've been very fortunate in my life. You know, with all of the instances I've had of manic depressive episodes, I could have wound up a lot worse.

30:00You know, I know I've been suicidal at least four times. And one time I wound up in the hospital. So I could have wound up a lot worse. And I'm happy to be able to do this research and to share it with people like you. Well, first of all, it is a true delight to have you on. I think that what you're saying is very compelling. I hope you turn it into a book. Okay. The title of the article is Mental Illness and Highly Successful Persons. It's written by James Rashardi. And we're going to get this out there for you to publicize it. But I want you to turn this into a book, not just a long paper. So you can be mad at me for that, Jim, but I don't care.