Help please! is bipolar the optimist and pessimist rolled into one?

Interesting take: For years now, most efforts to create diagnostic categories have tried to link them to observable behaviors and countable occurrences thereof. Attitudes like you mention would be hard to see or count. The manic pole may not really reflect optimism in all cases, but it might in some way. And it does seem like pessimism could be a feature of depression. Interesting thought you had there.