Richard Smith*, a 26-year-old PhD student, sits in the sunny garden of his Cambridge flat dressed casually in t-shirt and shorts. Conversation flits between Richard’s two passions: football - especially his home team Wolverhampton Wanderers - and synthetic biology, an expanding field of science that blends genetic biology with engineering, of which he is an expert. Richard has no more trouble explaining the latest advances in synthetic biology than he does in reeling off Wolves’ top scorers.

It is difficult to believe that four years ago this affable, intelligent and driven young man was lying in a bed of a psychiatric ward, which he describes as being “like something out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“You weren’t allowed sharp objects,” Richard remembers. “There was a whole range of people with psychiatric problems. I woke up and one guy was threatening to commit suicide, yelling into a mobile phone. Another guy used to have nightmares and shout obscenities in his sleep. I just cowered in bed and hoped everything would be all right.”

Richard had no idea what he was suffering from or why he had been admitted to one of the most high-risk psychiatric wards in the county. He had been a healthy and sporty child, but at the age of 22 he suffered his first attack of bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, a condition he had been carrying unknowingly all his life.

About 1 per cent of the population suffers from bipolar disorder, which means that almost 20,000 students in the UK are prone to the condition. However, a large number of those may be unaware of it, as bipolar disorder often remains hidden until later life.

Symptoms are triggered by a traumatic or stressful event in the sufferer’s life, such as the move from home to university - a frequent trigger for bipolar disorder in young people. Professor Peter McGuffin, Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, says: “University is a stressful time - students lead irregular lives, drink more than they should, and stay up very late. These can all be triggers.”

Richard’s trigger was a particularly stressful summer job. As a promising engineering student at Cambridge, he spent his holiday working for a multi-billion dollar engineering firm where he became a team manager for their latest product, electric power steering. “It was my crowning glory,” he says. Richard had helped the company develop the product for thousands of cars, so when a fault appeared in cars in Spain his team was sent to fix it. Richard excelled in such high-pressure situations, so they knew he would cope.

He says: “I was getting into the factory at 6am and not leaving until 9 or 10 at night, every day for six or seven weeks. A six-day week was standard, but sometimes we also did Sundays. It was over 30C in rural Spain, where nobody speaks English.”

A stressful scenario for anyone, but Richard with no Spanish, no formal qualifications and in his early twenties, thrived in the situation. “They never sent anyone else out because we were coping. I worked hard and always saw it as an opportunity.”

On returning to Britain, Richard describes his state as “ultra efficient” and his brain was “thinking, ticking all the time”. He was about to embark on his final year at Cambridge, and he had never felt better. Within days of coming back he was planning the most extravagant Freshers party the college had ever seen, spending hundreds of pounds of his hard-earned money on sound systems and music.

“Plans were getting grander but you don’t worry,” he says. “You’ve got this gloss, you feel quick and funny, able to do anything. You know that you’re right, but it soon goes from everyone laughing along with you to friends’ faces starting to show concern.”

Richard’s behaviour was changing rapidly. He had an enormous amount of energy although he was sleeping just three hours a night, and he talked incredibly quickly as thoughts rushed through his mind. He became irritable if people disagreed with him, and his ideas for the party were increasingly unrealistic.

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