Creativity and Mental Health

On a related topic to my current "Ability Bouquet" drawing (which includes differences in physical, emotional, and mental ability) is the correlation between creative people (painters, sculptors, musicians, performers, composers, fiction writers, poets) and mental health issues. As Lord Byron remarked about himself and his fellow poets, "We of the craft are all crazy. Some affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched."

This is a correlation that I've always found rather interesting - both on a personal note (as someone working in creative professions and with mental health issues running in her family) and on a broader scale - and is therefore a topic I've thought a lot about over the years. I even wrote a paper on this topic for an Art History class in college, listing famous 19th & 20th century artists who suffered (or probably suffered) from mental illnesses including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and substance abuse problems.

There are a lot of similar lists out there, linking famous (dead) people to probable mental disorders. For example, Kay Redfield Jamison's book, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament - a fantastic book, by the way, and well worth the read if this is a subject you're interested in - includes in Appendix B a list of writers, artists and composers with probable cyclothymia (a form of mild bipolar), major depression, or manic-depressive illness. The famous names include writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Victor Hugo, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, Joseph Conrad, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Mary Shelley, and Virginia Woolf; musicians Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, and Irving Berlin; and artists Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Edvard Munch, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

I find understanding people's psychology really fascinating, and it can be a fun (though not necessarily truthful) exercise to speculate on the inner turmoil of historical figures. I also find it interesting (and problematic) how eager our society is to latch onto this creativity-mental health correlation, to the point where we have this prevailing archetype of the crazy, boozy, moody, unstable artist. By putting so much weight on this correlation, we end up stereotyping, exaggerating, and misunderstanding it, to the detriment of living artists and contemporary sufferers of mental health issues. I want to clear up some of these misconceptions in this blog post.

First of all, it is important to remember that correlation does not imply causation. Having a mental illness does not make someone an artist - nor does being an artist necessarily give someone a mental illness.

It is possible that certain mental illnesses (especially mood disorders or substance abuse problems that include addiction to mood/mind altering substances) might inspire creative ideas or ideas with emotional resonance. But having thoughts or feelings and being able to turn those thoughts and feelings into a moving piece of art, music, theater, or writing is not the same thing. Thinking or feeling something does not always (nor often) translate into being able to work as a functioning artist.

For that matter, not everyone struggling with mental disorders wants to be an artist, and saying that there is or should be "a creative upside" to a manic episode, to seeing hallucinations, to overcoming pain, or to using mind-altering substances is a dangerous suggestion. It alienates or shames those who don't get anything "productive" out of these things, making them believe that they aren't processing or dealing with their emotional or mental health problems in an acceptable, affirming way.

It is also possible that trying to work as a professional artist - with the erratic hours, variable paycheck, and exposure to potentially dangerous art supplies (lead paints, fumes, aerosol sprays, sharp carving tools, exacto knives, etc) - might trigger or exacerbate an episode of a mental disorder in some people. But this type of work environment does not affect everyone in the same way, and usually when it comes to mental illnesses, nature and nurture work concurrently. Someone's environment alone won't cause mental illness - they also often have to have a genetic predisposition that makes mental health issues more likely to cause them problems.

What's more likely, then, is that instead of it being one OR the other, it's one AND the other. They each feed off each other in people who are both artistic and deal with mental health issues: their chosen profession will sometimes impact their mental health and their mental health with sometimes impact their professional life.

In addition, other outside factors might cause, inspire, or impact both. Maybe thinking creatively is a personality trait that both makes someone more likely to consider a career in the arts and to suffer from mental health issue; maybe genetic strengths in senses like vision, hearing, or touch (or in the parts of the brain that regulate those functions) make someone more likely to develop talents in visual, auditory, or tactile fields which are also creative, as well as making them predisposed to certain mental illnesses.

It has also been suggested that it is not actually true that more writers and artists suffer mental illness compared to the general population - just that they are perhaps more sensitive to their own mood states, and therefore more able or willing to articulate and report on them.

Science is still searching for the answers to these questions - and may never find them. Rarely is there just one cause; usually it is a whole plethora of possibilities, all working together - and yet also all working differently in each person.

The second important point I want to make is this: just because some artists suffer from very serious mental illnesses doesn't mean that all artists do - or should. It doesn't mean that a healthy, functional, well-adjusted artist is "less of an artist" for not struggling with inner demons. It also doesn't mean that mental illness makes someone a better artist.

In fact, the opposite is often true. Though periods of depression or mania might seem to give someone deep access to human emotions or spark artistic inspiration, an artist suffering from those mood disorders is often unable to actually function as an artist (that is, produce creatively) during those periods. It is only after they have somewhat recovered that they will have the motivation, focus, and ability to produce quality work or follow through on their projects to completion.

And yet we have this prevailing stereotype of the emotional artist, which romanticizes damaging and dysfunctional behaviors as something vital and required for anyone wishing to create serious art. As Jamison writes, "The assumption that within artistic circles madness, melancholy and suicide are somehow normal is prevalent, making it difficult at times to ferret out truth from expectation."

When people believe that their mental disorders are an integral part of who they are - the part that makes them special, gives them creative inspiration, or improves their work - they sometimes purposefully suffer them, even when other options are available. They might refuse treatment, deny medications, or choose to self-medicate instead (with harmful substances like alcohol or drugs), all in the spirit of retaining the core of their personality, being "true" to who they are, or tapping into a mythical artistic well of deep emotions/real creative inspiration.

Like any job, there will be times when it's easier or harder, when ideas come faster or slower, and when it seems like you've been waiting years for inspiration or recognition. But artists, writers, musicians, and performers are also sometimes expected to put themselves in dangerous positions or situations that others wouldn't, just for the sake of the story; suffer mental illnesses that others would not put up with, in an effort to carry the emotional weight of the world and see/understand universal truths about the human condition; or even purposefully self-harm with destructive behaviors in a misguided attempt to "become a true artist" - all expectations that are grossly unjust for anyone to endure. When it's such a prevelent idea in society, it's hard to shake - but the truth is, artists do not have to suffer for their art, and I resent the implication that they do.

Mental disorders are serious things. I personally know several people (most of whom are NOT artist-types) who suffer from depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, and others; I see how it impacts their lives. It's not something to joke about, minimize, ignore, stigmatize, or fetishize. Suffering isn't romantic. It doesn't automatically make people stronger or more creative, and it doesn't open imaginative doors to them that would otherwise remain closed. People can find inspiration in a lot of places - their suffering included - but no one has to suffer to find inspiration. There are always other ways.