Large-scale study confirms link between creativity and mental illness

October 16, 2012 in Psychology & Psychiatry

(Medical Xpress)—People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, there being a particularly salient connection between writing and schizophrenia. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet, whose large-scale Swedish registry study is the most comprehensive ever in its field.

Last year, the team showed that artists and scientists were more common amongst families where bipolar disorder and is present, compared to the population at large. They subsequently expanded their study to many more psychiatric diagnoses - such as schizoaffective disorder, depression, anxiety syndrome, , drug abuse, autism, ADHD, and suicide - and to include people in rather than exclusively .

The present study tracked almost 1.2 million patients and their relatives, identified down to second-cousin level. Since all were matched with healthy controls, the study incorporated much of the Swedish population from the most recent decades. All data was anonymized and cannot be linked to any individuals.

The results confirmed those of their previous study: certain mental illness - bipolar disorder - is more prevalent in the entire group of people with artistic or scientific professions, such as dancers, researchers, photographers and authors. Authors specifically also were more common among most of the other psychiatric diseases (including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety syndrome and substance abuse) and were almost 50 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

The researchers also observed that creative professions were more common in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia, , anorexia nervosa and, to some extent, autism. According to Simon Kyaga, consultant in psychiatry and doctoral student at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the results give cause to reconsider approaches to mental illness.

"If one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patients illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment," he says. "In that case, the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost. In psychiatry and medicine generally there has been a tradition to see the disease in black-and-white terms and to endeavour to treat the patient by removing everything regarded as morbid."

More information: Kyaga, S. et al., Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-Year prospective total population study. Journal of Psychiatric Research, corrected proof online 9 October 2012. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.g… ubmed_docsum

Journal reference: Journal of Psychiatric Research search and more info website

Provided by Karolinska Institutet search and more info website

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Tausch
Oct 16, 2012

Rank: 2.3 / 5 (3)
Done by that branch of science having the leading statistics in risk and rate of suicide.
Birger
Oct 16, 2012

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Tausch,
-and in what way is that relevant for their results?
Tausch
Oct 16, 2012

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Aren't their results less relevant when the methods offered to heal (not cure) the disorders of others fail to heal the same disorders experienced among themselves?

The assumption is:
Psychiatrists and psychologists have the fewest of any group/individual disorders.

Nothing is further removed from reality than this assumption.
Beerbarian
Oct 16, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
Tausch...
"Psychiatrists and psychologists have the fewest of any group/individual disorders."
- Said nobody, ever.

I think ultimately psychiatry does not claim to be the "authority" on mental illness so much as many people, including yourself imagine it to claim. It simply takes a series of difficult to quantify and difficult to treat disorders with complex physiological underpinnings (which are just beginning to be understood) and assigns to them a set of objective measures so that SOME attempt at treatment can be attempted. its not an exact science, but is any science a truly exact science? just people doing their best to solve real world problems, instead of trolling physorg comment sections...
grovecanada
Oct 16, 2012

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
Surprisingly, much of what people call mental illness is really just iron anemia causing delusions...The lower income earnings of the art group would throw then into that mode more quickly than better earners(hence the correlation in the article)...An over the counter daily iron pill from your pharmacists's counter will go a long long way to curing so called bipolar & other worse diagnoses...(& talking cures won't fix nutritional deficiencies, nor will they help with the low income artists get...)
Tausch
Oct 16, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
Beerbarion...

The results confirmed those of their previous study: certain mental illness - bipolar disorder - is more prevalent in the entire group of people with artistic or scientific professions, such as dancers, researchers, photographers and authors. Authors specifically also were more common among most of the other psychiatric diseases (including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety syndrome and substance abuse) and were almost 50 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population.


Results of previous studies confirm that: certain mental illnesses is more prevalent in the entire group of people belonging to psychiatric and psychological professions...and were the most likely to commit suicide that the general population.

So yes, psychiatry can and does lay 'claim' and 'authority' to this statistic.

So yes, they 'are doing they best to solve' their own 'real world problems' before laying claim towards others of trolling physorg comment sections...

Tausch
Oct 16, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
is=are
that=than
Typos
vlaaing peerd
Oct 17, 2012

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It would be worth considering that mentally ill people are more likely to become creative, rather than the other way around.

Creativity is something that's particularly useful in areas where there's a deficiency. If you're missing an arm or a leg, you have to be creative to workaround it. Same goes for mental deficiencies.
Tausch
Oct 17, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
Yes. Synesthesia/ideasthesia is the 'creativity' of the brain. If you're missing sight, seeing shape through sound for example.

Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process,... - wikipedia


http://en.wikiped...asthesia
http://en.wikiped...esthesia

And here showing the most promise:
http://en.wikiped...aptation
Perceptual adaptation is an element that has been researched extensively by George Stratton. All of his experiments failed to falsify the theory of perceptual adaptation. Perceptual adaptation is a theory that proposes the notion that our brain and senses collaborate. Our vision can be altered, but our brain corrects this alteration to seem correct. Our brain allows us to live a normal life with an altered perception of a normal life.


The gap between altered senses and where 'something' is missing altogether is a gap the present brain tries to bridge.
Look forward to the day...
Tausch
Oct 17, 2012

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...when the brain acquires/shows this ability too.
Learning - a power of thought.
ziphead
Oct 18, 2012

Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
"Large-scale study confirms link between creativity and mental illness"

the title that brings smile on the face of every single fruit loop on this forum...
B__
Oct 18, 2012

Rank: 2 / 5 (1)
Makes you wonder: What if its stress that causes these increases in mental illness? Lets see how the rank of stressful jobs correlates with the rank of "creative jobs" and also the amount of mental illness.

You could certainly imagine that these professions (including psychologists, psychiatrists) are highly self-aware and perhaps they are more likely to report and get treatment for mental illness, where someone else may just ignore it, or find it such a gradual decline that they don't even realize it.
B__
Oct 18, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
From the actual paper: "creative professions denotes the overall aggregated group of scientific and artistic occupations, while creative occupations is used for creative professions and for any of the subgroups (i.e., scientific and artistic)."

So if your definition of creative is that your a scientist or an artist, that is a pretty vague and inclusive definition, thus I wonder if high stress could be a greater feature of this group than "creativity"
Quantum_Passion
Oct 20, 2012

Rank: not rated yet
"Surprisingly, much of what people call mental illness is really just iron anemia causing delusions...The lower income earnings of the art group would throw then into that mode more quickly than better earners(hence the correlation in the article)...An over the counter daily iron pill from your pharmacists's counter will go a long long way to curing so called bipolar & other worse diagnoses...(& talking cures won't fix nutritional deficiencies, nor will they help with the low income artists get...)"

Care to share your delusional statements with any type of factual evidence? That is funny, because anemia is one of the things commonly checked for before diagnosis, which leaves your statement utterly useless.

Please refrain from judging the diagnosis of millions of people before you have an adequate knowledge of the subject matter, your only doing disservice to those who have it and to those who diagnose it as well.

Thank you.
Rank 4 /5 (11 votes)
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