When Brilliance & Madness Collide is a personal account of Ruth Manning, PhD, who has struggled with bipolar I disorder for the majority of her adult life. Her career path has had a myriad of twists and turns, from serving as founder and CEO of a biotech DNA sequence analysis software company, to working at a US national laboratory, to teaching mathematics as a university professor. These professional successes are interspersed with many hypomanic and manic episodes, over a dozen severe manic psychotic episodes requiring psychiatric hospitalizations, and the personal tragedies of long-time friendships and family keepsakes forever lost to the chaos of a manic or hypomanic state.
This book is partially a memoir and partially a journey inside her mind during a manic psychotic episode that occurred in 2018. Notably, this was the most severe episode of mania and psychosis that she had experienced since 1995. During this period, Ruth went five days without food or sleep, which is very dangerous for a 67-year-old diabetic and led to twenty pounds of unintentional weight loss. She experienced numerous hallucinations, psychoses, and tangential connections that nearly resulted in a house fire, which she later chronicled in multiple notebooks while still hypomanic and recovering in a psychiatric hospital.