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

em means “into,” pathos is “suffering”—“into suffering.”

resilience—“good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development.”

Karl Jaspers made empathy central to psychiatry, a revolutionary idea at the time.

Insanity is not a “regrettable . . . accident” but the “indispensable catalyst” of genius.

But she found that breast cancer patients saw the experience of serious illness and subsequent recovery as transformative; they didn’t just go back to being who they were.

people estimate themselves as more likely to experience positive events than their peers.

We tend to see mental health as “being normal”—happy, realistic, fulfilled.

Twice, before he was 13, he tried to commit suicide.

Mental illness can produce great leaders, but if the illness is too severe, or treated with the wrong drugs, it produces failure or, sometimes, evil.