A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadrship and Mental Illness is a book you might want to read. Some will find the historical illustrations thin while others may find the analysis provided a stretch in place, but Nassiar Ghaemi has published one interesting book. Ghaemi is the director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tuft Medical School. Using available historical and medical evidence, he argues that various mood disorders can be linked to success in leadership situations. In individual sections he takes up creativity, realism, empathy, and resilience. He finally takes up treatment and mental in general. Along the way, he illustrates his views using the lives of well known persons including Bush, Blair, Nixon, JFK, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Lincoln Churchill. Just the character sketches that Ghaemi uses is worth the price of the book. This is one of the more thought provoking books that I have read in the past couple of years. Readers will approach leadership differently after completing this volume. The reading of Sean Runnette is excellent.

The thesis is so well developed, the gifts which accompany depression and mania create the best crisis leaders. I feel I better understand leaders like Sherman, FDR, Lincoln, JFK and the business leadership of Ted Turner.

Warning---SPOILER ALERT---Don't look down if you haven't read the book yet.

The contrast between JFK when he was poorly medicated and well medicated. I've often read about the difference between his early and late presidency in terms of critical decision making, but never with such insight.

I really want to follow up with a book on Churchill.

I can't say it was exactly my favorite, but I am glad that I know Hitler was taking intravenous methamphetamine five times a day for the last four years of his life. I feel like I better understand how horrific results follow an evil mind wielding limitless power when it is clinically sick and made even worse through severe drug addiction.

I got choked up at the march on Washington. Looking at the momentous occasion while cognizant of the depression forged empathy of both JFK and Martin Luther King made it all the more moving.

I had no idea that JFK nearly died so many times. I liked the comparison of FDR before and after polio.

I first heard of Nassir Ghaemi from a lecture on ADHD and Bipolar and then found several friends who recommended this book. It journeys into the lives of key leaders who changed the world, and tells the story which at the time the world was not yet open to hear. With public stigma and misunderstanding, if Kennedy was known to have mental issues and take drugs would the world so widely have accepted him? What about Abraham Lincoln? Why was Hitler so cruel (could drugs have made him worse?)? As a psychiatry resident I work with hundreds of patients who look for hope, meaning in the midst of their mental illness. This book can decrease your stigma of mental illness and also open up your mind to the possibility of mental illness being a positive thing in some situations.

Anyone who finds the inner workings of the mind of interest will enjoy this book. It sees mental illness from a perspective not often contemplated. It demonstrates that, for good or bad, we owe much of our history to the mental illness of various leaders.