Creativity and Mental Illness

Mental illness covers a wide range of mental health conditions or disorders that affect a person’s mood, thinking and behavior. A few examples of mental illness are depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and eating disorders. Many highly creative people have suffered from mental illness. Additionally, a higher than average incidence of psychological disorders in adult artists; visual artists, writers, musicians, actors or other creative individuals has been reported in numerous studies, for a wide range of mental health disorders (Young 197). Like the great Aristotle once said, “There was never a genius without a tincture of madness”.

One mental illness that is prevalent in creative people is schizophrenia. Many world renowned artists and creative individuals have been diagnosed with schizophrenia including Van Gogh, a post-impressionist painter; John Nash, the father of ‘game theory’; and finally, Vaslav Nijinsky, “the great Russian dancer who was driven from the stage by madness in 1917 at the peak of his fame” (Sobel 1). The cases of Van Gogh, Nash, and Nijinsky are extraordinary, this is because most people with schizophrenia are debilitated by the disorder. It would make sense then, that creative people with schizophrenia such as Van Gogh, Nash, and Nijinsky have a tendency to be more creative before the disease onset as well as during later phases of remission.

There are cases of many more extremely creative people, who don’t necessarily suffer from schizophrenia themselves, yet they have close relatives who do. For example, the famous physicist Albert Einstein had a son with schizophrenia. Coincidence? I would like to think not. It turns out, a great amount of studies have suggested that relatives of people suffering from schizophrenia do in fact benefit from above average creative intelligence. According to the article Abnormal Asymmetry of Brain Connectivity in Schizophrenia,“Both structural and functional evidence suggest that schizophrenia is associated with reduced lateralization of language to the left hemisphere, with some studies reporting a reversal of lateralization to the right hemisphere” (Ribolsi). This lateralization can be found in the relatives of schizophrenics as well. In turn, this lateralization is a major advantage for these relatives because they are gaining some creativity due to the increased use of their right hemisphere and consequently, due to the increased communication between both hemispheres of the brain. In the case of those with full blown schizophrenia, the increased communication between the different hemispheres of the brain is still present, however, their language processes and thoughts tend to be more disorganized for them to be able to make use of it in a creative way. What is very interesting about this is that, Vaslav Nijinsky’s family did have a history of mental health disorders. Could this be why his sister, Bronslava Nijinska, was also a talented choreographer, and why his parents and brother Stanislav were all professional dancers?

Not only can schizophrenia be linked to creativity, but many other mental illnesses can as well. “Creativity research has not spent much time examining the anxiety and depression dimensions relative to the bipolar and schizotypal dimensions” (Silvia 7). Another mental illness that I have found is widespread among creative people is Depression, this includes Georgia O’Keeffe and Pablo Picasso. There seems to be a stereotype that in order to be highly creative, having mental illness or distress is an almost required. Scientific research has made many attempts to uncover the basis behind this stereotype.

Many of these studies have focused mostly on disorders of mood and have yet to reach a definitive solution. However, in a 2017 study called Creativity and Mood Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, researcher Christa Taylor, laid out all of what is currently know within this field of research. In this study there were thirty-six identified studies that focused the relationship between creativity and mood disorders. The first idea that was researched in this study was whether or not creative people are more likely to have a mood disorder compared to non-creative controls. The research Taylor looked was data from from about ten different studies that involved fine arts students, eminent figures from creative fields, and creative writers. She concluded that there was in fact a clear relationship between having a diagnosis of a mood disorder, such as depression, and being creative (Taylor). This finding was true for not only visual art and dance, but also for different ways of measuring creativity (such as tests of divergent thinking or musical performance). Interestingly, creativity was not most commonly associated with depression, but actually bipolar disorder and in fact, was not linked to all mood disorders at all. The second idea that Taylor addressed was the inverse of the first; weather or not people with a clinical diagnosis of mood disorder more creative, compared to healthy controls. This time, the research used about thirteen different studies. The conclusion to this study, contrary to the last, was no because the differences in level of creativity between people with and without mood disorders were not statistically significant. However when this study was broken down further by focusing on specific genres of creativity for example, people with certain mood disorders tended to score higher in painting ability but not other measures forms of creativity.

After reviewing this article, it seems that many recent studies suggest that, while creative people are more inclined to mood disorder, there is still little evidence that having a mood disorder would make a person more creative. This is contrasting to Ribolsi's study about schizophrenia and lateralization of the brain, which suggested that the disorder is what was facilitating the creativity. Why would this not be the case for other mental health disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder? It is possible that mood disorder is an aid to creativity, but the benefit of creativity is engulfed by many disadvantages. This could be why it wouldn’t show up in many studies. If this is true, and mood disorders do in fact have hidden beneficial effect on creativity, it is possible that these disorders can pioneer new ways of thinking and seeing the world. This could be an explanation as to why research associated higher creativity with the deep dives of depression. This was additionally seen with bipolar disorder that combines the deep dives with a “return to the surface” which gives a chance for these insights to manifest. This was the case for schizophrenia as stated above, that creativity flourished during the inactive periods of the disease.

The other possible explanation for these findings would be that, mood disorders do not help creativity, but rather creativity is what sparks the mood disorder as a result. As any artists know, the typical lifestyle that is required in most creative fields, such as dance, acting and studio art, can be arduous. For example, musicians and actors who have to spend many of their days traveling and their nights in unfamiliar hotels. Not to mention, in many cases there is some financial instability in these fields. Lonely and stressful situations such as these could easily lead to anxiety disorders or depression.

Most of the research considered in this essay does not fully resolve the never ending questions about whether or not mood disorders and creativity are definitively linked, and if so how they are linked. These studies do however, shed some light on some perspectives and stereotypes such as, expecting people who struggle with a disorder to thrive in creativity. However, the results that were the least ambiguous where proving that there is a higher occurrence of mental health disorders in creative people. The main take away people should get from this essay is that while it may be true that creative people tend to have mental disorders this does not imply that when people have a mental disorder they tend to get creative.

References

Kassing, G. (2017). History of Dance, 2E, 2nd Edition. [Yuzu]. pp. 161-166 Retrieved from https://reader.yuzu.com/#/books/9781492557562/

Ribolsi, M., Daskalakis, Z. J., Siracusano, A., & Koch, G. (2014). Abnormal Asymmetry of Brain Connectivity in Schizophrenia. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 1010. http://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.01010

Silvia, P. J., & Kimbrel, N. A. (2010). A dimensional analysis of creativity and mental illness: Do anxiety and depression symptoms predict creative cognition, creative accomplishments, and creative self-concepts? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(1), 2–10. https://doi-org.nuncio.cofc.edu/10.1037/a0016494

Sobel, D. (1981, August 05). ANALYST'S VIEWS ON NIJINSKY FINALLY PUBLISHED. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/05/us/analyst-s-views-on-nijinsky-finally-published.html

Taylor, C. L. (2017). Creativity and Mood Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(6), 1040-1076. doi:10.1177/1745691617699653

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