Demystification Monday Creativity and Mental Illness

So, is it true? Are creative types more likely to be mentally ill? Could creativity ever be mistaken for mental illness, or vice versa? We can all probably name a few famous artists and writers who were mentally ill:

Beethoven: Bipolar disorder with psychotic features

Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett: Schizophrenia

Sylvia Plath: Bipolar disorder



Ernest Hemingway: Depression



To name just a few.

But there are plenty of creative types who are NOT mentally ill, right?

To a large extent, what's "normal" is a purely social construction. It's just what most people think is appropriate. Every culture and subculture is different. So does being "weird" or "marching to the beat of your own drummer" equal mental illness?

On the one hand, I don't think it's that helpful to think of it that way. Here's how I think about mental illness:

Impairment.

You can be weird and still function. You can be a slave to your muse and still have relatively good hygeine and maintain normal relationships and get out of bed in the morning. When you can't--when you really, really can't keep up with usual tasks of daily living--then it's likely you have a problem.

Mental illness makes it hard to function. Quirks and creativity in and of themselves do not constitute a mental disorder.

On the other hand, there's actually some research to suggest there IS a link between creativity and mental illness. One study found that writers were much more likely than non-writers to have disorders like depression and bipolar disorder. More recently, one group of researchers discovered that folks with schizotypal disorder were more creative. You can read more about their fascinating research here.

But other studies haven't found the same connection between creativity and mental illness. If you want to read for yourself, here's a link to a review study (an analysis of several studies in the last century) that summarizes these findings, and here's a link to a neat little article about the relation between writing and mental illness, which includes suggestions for more in-depth reading.

What nearly all the studies find: folks with really severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia, or depressive disorders that impair functioning in the extreme, ARE NOT more creative. At some point, the mental illness is so crippling that it disables creativity. Remember my post about psychosis? When thoughts are disorganized, when you lose touch with reality, when you're too depressed to move or too manic to hold a thought in your head ... it's kinda hard to be productive.

Do you think of yourself as a creative type? What do you think of research that shows a connection between creativity and mental illness? Between writing and depression/bipolar disorder? Is it frightening? Encouraging? Irrelevant?

Be sure to check out psychiatrist and writer Dr. Laura Diamond's blog post today about symptoms and diagnosis of schizophrenia! We are now collaborating to answer writers' questions about depicting mental health/illness in their books. Feel free to shoot us a writing-related question, and we'll cover it!