Robert Trivers

• Trivers spoke publicly about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a severe manic episode during his junior year at Harvard in 1964. [4][1]

• During his junior year at Harvard, Trivers experienced about five weeks of mania marked by severe insomnia and feelings of grandiosity. He later described it as his first and worst breakdown. He admitted himself to hospital and remained hospitalized for about eleven weeks. [4][1]
• Trivers said the experience was so painful that afterward he contemplated suicide if he felt another breakdown beginning. In 1972, during what he described as his second breakdown, he was losing sleep while working through ideas about parent-offspring conflict. He was hospitalized for ten days after returning to the United States and later said this was the only episode he believed had contributed positively to his scientific thinking; subsequent breakdowns, he said, were uniformly harmful. [4][5]

• During his first hospitalization, Trivers wrote that medication brought his psychosis under control and allowed him to sleep and recover. He received care across three hospitals. [4]
• In later manic episodes, Trivers was again hospitalized, sometimes after police intervention. [4][5]

• Trivers wrote that after manic episodes were brought under control, he typically experienced prolonged depression before returning to his previous level of functioning. After his first hospitalization, he returned to Harvard and continued his education before beginning his scientific career. [4][1]

“After that, the breakdowns were uniformly bad.”

— Robert Trivers [5]