Benjamin Diven

• Diven has publicly identified himself as having bipolar disorder. His 2009 memoir, Closing the Chasm: Letters from a Bipolar Physician to His Son, was written explicitly about his experience living and working as a doctor with the condition. [1][2]
• The memoir traces his mental-health difficulties across medical training and practice and discusses how bipolar disorder affected both his personal and professional life. [2]

• Diven has described bipolar disorder affecting him across medical school, residency and later clinical practice, with periods of both elevated and depressed mood disrupting his personal and professional life. His memoir also discusses a period in which he came close to suicide. [1][2]
• His account portrays the illness as recurrent rather than a single episode. An academic analysis of his memoir notes that he experienced further intense bipolar episodes during his professional career and that the pressures of establishing and managing a medical practice sometimes worsened his symptoms. [2]

• Diven has described medication and psychotherapy as important parts of his treatment. An academic analysis of his memoir reports that finding an effective medication regimen helped reduce his manic, depressive and anxiety symptoms and contributed to greater stability. [1][2]
• An academic analysis of Diven’s memoir reports that he sometimes managed his own medication without outside guidance; on one occasion, repeatedly increasing his lithium dose resulted in lithium toxicity. The same analysis reports that he also resisted medication at times because he did not want to suppress manic symptoms. [2]

• Diven’s account presents recovery as a gradual and uneven process rather than the end of bipolar disorder. An academic analysis of his memoir describes periods of improvement interrupted by further episodes and highlights the importance of support from his family, friends and colleagues. [2]
• By the time he was writing publicly about his experience, Diven described having reached a high level of stability while continuing his work as a doctor. [3]

• Through Closing the Chasm, Diven sought to give readers an open account of living with bipolar disorder while working as a doctor and navigating family life. The book was intended both for people with similar experiences and for their loved ones, while also bringing a doctor’s perspective to the illness. [1]

“It’s an engaging, enlightening, and readable story of a person with bipolar disorder taken from high school to adulthood.”

— Benjamin Diven [3]