Bipolar disorder refers to a mood disorder affecting approximately one in every 100 adults. For those people, severe mood disturbances – either highly elevated or strongly depressed — can make normal functioning extremely difficult.

In this film, we meet ‘Twink’, former photographer for The Jam, who has experienced the extremes of bipolar disorder for more than two decades. Twink is presently a patron of MDF, The Bipolar Organisation (http://www.mdf.org.uk/) and is passionate about helping Professor Nicholas Craddock, based at the Cardiff University School of Medicine, in his research to discover the underlying genetic factors that lead to this condition.

Nicholas, also featured in the film, was one of the main investigators in the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium study, in which around 2000 human genomes were studied for genetic hints as to why certain people develop this mood disorder. He and his team continue to find and scrutinise the DNA of volunteers through the Bipolar Disorder Research Network (BDRN http://bdrn.org/), the largest study of bipolar disorder in the world, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

The Bipolar Blues | A film by the Wellcome Trust