Mar
Walking A Fine Line
I always had this feeling that Heath Ledger was just a really nice guy. What a bloody tragedy.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The wildly creative genius often walks a fine line, as many of humankind’s greatest minds have edged into the darkness of mental illness. Now a new study shows that creative people tend to share more personality traits with the mentally ill than they do with the middle-of-the-road masses.
This finding suggests that both creativity and manic depression, also called bipolar disorder, may share some of the same genetic underpinnings, Connie M. Strong of Stanford University in California told Reuters Health.
“Both bipolar disorder and creativity probably are genetically driven, and may be related to the same set of genetic predispositions,” she suggested.
Strong and her co-author Dr. Terence A. Ketter measured creativity and personality traits in 48 patients with bipolar disorder, 25 patients with depression, 32 graduate students pursuing creative disciplines and 47 healthy people pursuing a relatively uncreative path in life.
Bipolar disorder is marked by extreme mood swings from euphoria and excessive energy to severe depression and hopelessness. These drastic swings can damage the person’s relationships and affect their work, and sometimes lead to suicide. Depression is sometimes called a “unipolar” condition in that it is only one half of the equation that makes up bipolar disorder.
Strong and Ketter found that both creative students and those with bipolar disorders shared several personality traits. Such individuals were more open, and more neurotic and moody than the other study participants, according to findings presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting held in Philadelphia.
People with neuroticism tend to have more anxiety, lower self-esteem and lower tolerance for stress than other individuals, and they may feel alienated, victimized and resentful, the researchers note.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Strong explained that openness is a trait associated with a willingness to embrace new experiences, as well as being imaginative, curious and unconventional. These traits are often found in creative people, she added.
Because similar traits are found in those with bipolar disorder it might indicate that both creativity and the mental illness stem from a similar genetic predisposition.
“It makes sense that they are two potential outcomes of a shared predisposition,” she said.
Indeed, previous studies have shown that there is a much higher rate of bipolar disorder in creative individuals than those in the general population.
Strong said that people with bipolar disorder might also have creative tendencies because they see the world in two ways, with the same surroundings appearing differently to them depending on whether they are feeling manic or depressed.
This “double view” of the world could allow manic depressive patients to be more open, she noted, one of the hallmark traits of creativity.
The bipolar patients that participated in Strong’s study appeared to be many times as creative as patients with depression, and showed even higher levels of creativity relative to those without mental illness. In fact, creativity among treated bipolar patients matched that seen in the graduate students pursuing creative degrees.
Strong added that it was important to note that bipolar disorder patients showed high creativity despite the fact that they were being treated for their condition. Many patients are afraid to take medication for their disorder out of fear that it will impair their creativity, but these findings seem to suggest otherwise, Strong said.
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Connecting Depression and Artistry
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. New York Times June 3, 2002
Everyone knows that creative geniuses are all mad. At least that is what the time-honored notion linking creativity and mental illness holds.
Recently, this was underscored by “A Beautiful Mind,” the film about the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Dr. John Forbes Nash Jr., who struggled with schizophrenia. Bedeviled by hallucinations and delusions, Dr. Nash is seen scribbling mathematical formula on his Princeton dorm window and doing pioneering work on game theory in a pub. But in real life, Dr. Nash accomplished his greatest mathematics before his illness really took hold.
As a psychiatrist, I have treated several highly creative people, all relieved to be rid of the symptoms of their mental illnesses. So I was feeling confident when it came to understanding the connection between mental illness and creativity. Simply put, psychiatric illness rarely confers creativity and treatment would not impair it. At least, that was my cherished theory until I met Sheryl.
Sheryl, a photographer, had been depressed for nearly all her 36 years. Always gloomy and pessimistic, she accepted that she was hard-wired for unhappiness and that this was just her unlucky personality. So it never occurred to her that she might have a treatable illness. It was her boyfriend, singing the praises of his own treatment for depression, who sent her my way.
Though she had witnessed her boyfriend’s transformation on medication, she was skeptical that it would work for her, since she had no concept of what it would be like to feel well. It turned out that there was a deeper reason. She was afraid the treatment might dry up the wellspring of her creativity. To Sheryl, her depression and her art were inextricably linked, even though she knew that she had been artistically paralyzed in periods of severe depression.
I told her that she had been suffering from a lifelong mild form of chronic depression called dysthymia, which she had mistaken for her personality, and that it was just as treatable as the severe episodes of acute depression that she periodically had.
In one session, we discussed the topic of mood disorders and creativity. She knew of creative geniuses like Robert Schumann and John Keats, each manic depressive, and was sure that suffering was a prerequisite of great art. I countered that their creative output actually dropped during flare-ups. While there was evidence of a strong connection between bipolar disorder and creativity, the data for a link between pure depression — like Sheryl’s — and creativity was much weaker.
I reassured her that the antidepressant would not diminish her as an artist. The depression had hobbled her, and treatment, if anything, ought to free her to greater heights of expression.
Sheryl came to the next session carrying a large portfolio of her photography. She wanted me to see her art before treatment started so I could witness its effect on her work. In stark black and white photos, she had captured the homeless and poor. Her kinship with the dispossessed was obvious, and the images were sad and moving.
Despite her skepticism, Sheryl began treatment with an antidepressant that same day. In two months, Sheryl noticed that her lifelong pessimism, insomnia and fatigue had lifted. The depression melted away, and she felt happy without any other change in her life save the antidepressant.
There was only one problem. The antidepressant had not just improved her mood, but had also transformed the content of her art. While Sheryl was now making and selling more photographs, she judged the quality to be inferior to her depressed art. I was flustered and asked to see her recent work.
To my amazement, the photography had undergone a change as pronounced as her mood. Many shots were now in color, but the greatest effect was a change in subject: abject images had given way to street scenes of raucous boys and amorous couples. Sheryl dismissed the work as commercially successful but artistically mediocre. Who was I to judge?
Now she faced a difficult choice: happiness in life or excellence in art. She chose to stop the antidepressant but remain in therapy. Within three months she had fully relapsed into depression, but preferred the art now to her “happy pictures.”
After several months of feeling depressed, she changed her mind and restarted the antidepressant. It sounds heretical coming from a psychiatrist, but a little depression probably was good for her art, even if the personal cost was too high. In the end, she opted for happiness.
City of Angles