Mental Disturbia

"James dear, would you say that you believe the school of though, that those who are more creative are also more likely to have poor mental health. It is said that the greatest artists have the greatest internal battles, the best musicians have the biggest heartbreaks, and so on. However, is this true"?

"Hmmm! Interesting thought - Could it not just be that these individuals are more closely in tune with nature and the divine. That their mental faculties are more highly sensitive to simply listening to the rhythms, motions and waves of a universe desperate for us to hear and embrace its essence".

"Well, Clara, now that you mention it, psychologists have been looking into the link between creativity and mental health for years, but only recently have they produced concrete evidence of what's really going on".

"It does tend to be the common stereotype that those who are creative are more likely to have a mental illness. For years the typecast of the depressed intellectual, or bipolar artist, or anyone of the same ilk, has prevailed in our society".

"I know what you mean. A lot of this stereotype has branched out from the fact that there have been creative geniuses who also had a mental illness, such as Vincent van Gogh or Virginia Woolf. There are also Modern examples...

There is the 27 Club, a group of famous creatives who died at 27 including Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), Kurt Cobain (1967-1994), and Janis Joplin (1943-1970)".

"I get it though, most of the time, if one is truly as ill as van Gogh was, then it is very hard to produce work. There seems to be the belief that their work could only be created because of their mental illness, but that can be highly questioned....

To say that Mental health causes creativity or vice versa has very little evidence to support it, apart from some famous examples. If there is any link, it is more likely to be a correlation rather than a causation.

Take Percy Shelley, for example -

He was often regarded as a disturbed poet due to his radical political and social views, as well as his chaotic personal life. His poetry reflects themes of revolution, love, and the power of imagination, which can be interpreted as a reflection of his disturbed state of mind. Shelley's life was marked by crises, family conflicts, and a defiance of social conventions, which contributed to his troubled reputation and the complexity of his work.

Let's look at his Sonnet poem, Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley's life, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views, and defiance of social conventions, sent him into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818 and over the next four years produced what Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill call "some of the finest poetry of the Romantic period". His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein. He died in a boating accident in 1822 at age 29".

"Yet, the special cases of world-famous individuals are anomalies when looking at the wider link between creativity and mental health because they are geniuses, or, in other words, not your average person".

"Where did it all start though"?

"From what I understand...The stereotype started with a simple quote by Aristotle (384-322 BCE). He stated that “no great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.” However, “madness” does not necessarily mean mental illness.

From then on, people thought that genius brought about mental illness. It then evolved to the belief that creativity was linked to mental illness, but they are two very different things...To understand why we have overemphasized the link between creativity and mental illness, we must define creativity. The formal definition is the quality of being able “to produce through imaginative skill".

"The definition should be more comprehensive to encapsulate what we mean when we talk about it in reference to mental illness. Dr. Gregory J. Feist, a lead researcher in the field of creativity and psychology, suggests that there are two criteria...

When you are creative, what you produce has to be both “original” and “meaningful to some group of people.”

"Creativity is actually a social label. Take van Gogh as an example. He was not thought of as creative until after his death because his paintings didn’t hold any meaning for other people during his lifetime. The public just thought he had no skill".

"Now, we have to look at the baseline. If people think that mental health is linked to creativity, we should first know how many people have a mental illness. We will use statistics from the US as an example.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, almost one in five American adults live with a mental illness. Are they all geniuses?

This includes the seven main types of mental disorders: mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, psychotic disorders, eating disorders, trauma-related disorders, and substance abuse disorders"

"And yet James, People who are creative in their field are often at the top because they are bringing something new to the table and it is meaningful to others. This does not just mean in the arts, but also in the natural sciences and social sciences.

Dr. Fiest decided to carry out a study on the world’s most creative people. He wanted to find out if the “mad-genius” myth was true.

He and his team went through the biographies of people who were considered creative by the population. They collected details on whether they had any kind of mental illnesses. They categorized people into artists and scientists.

In order to have something to compare the result to, the team also collected data from athletes' biographies because the job was not considered to be very creative.

In 2016, when the study was conducted, research stated that 46% of Americans would meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition sometime in their lifetime. Dr. Fiest found that all creative and non-creative people who had biographies written about them had an elevated chance of having a mental illness.

The scientists were at 61% and the artists were at 86%. Interestingly, the athletes were at 62% which indicates that it is not the creativity that might induce a mental illness, but another factor.

While immediately it may seem like the stereotype is confirmed, take a step back before you make this assumption. The study also found that scientists are more likely to commit suicide than artists, and that athletes have more problems with drug abuse.

The researchers believe that creative people in the sciences are more likely to take their own lives because there is less of an expressive outlet in their work.

The researchers also theorize that the reason some of these creatives would have gotten into art in the first place is because it is a way of coming to terms with your own reality".

"That is so very interesting, Clara. It seems that creativity does not necessitate nor compound mental illness, but is a way to deal with it. This could be why people who are more prone to mental illness are drawn to creative professions".

"Bear in mind that the kind of creativity that is discussed in the study comprises a rare group of people, those who have become famous off the back of their creations. In reality, not all people who do so have a mental illness".

"In the end, It seems that in the cases of people who are known for being creative, artists are more apt to have a mental illness, but this is not the only variable. Fame, upbringing, and so many other factors play a role as well".

"Our stereotype that creativity breeds mental illness and vice versa does not stand true for most people. It just so happens that those who tend to have a mental disorder look to the creative professions because they help to deal with their issues".

"Ah yes. So, you and I being the creative types. Do you think that we are both mentally challenged"?

"Ha, ha. Definitively so. Yes we certainly are".

"I agree, I believe we all have a bit of madness within, It's what makes us interesting".

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Excerpts from:

Story by Stars Insider

Sources: (Moraine Valley Community College Library) (National Institute of Mental Health) (Indian Journal of Psychiatry)