Intelligence, Creativity, and a Touch of Madness

[Rayaan]

I think there's a romanticization of the concept of tortured genius, How many studies on this have been done, and how many have included both non-artists with mental diagnoses, and artists with no diagnoses?

I agree that the concept of "tortured genius" has been romanticized by many. And currently, this is still a pretty controversial issue. However, I think that there is some truth to it.

Newer and larger studies have, such as the one below, found a positive association between creativity and mental illness.

Link between creativity and mental illness confirmed in large-scale Swedish study

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 schizophrenia 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, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, autism, ADHD, anorexia nervosa and suicide -- and to include people in outpatient care rather than exclusively hospital patients.

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.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...084934.htm


Edit: Also, here's an interesting discussion that I was reading that deals particularly with the link between depression and creativity:

http://www.ted.com/conversations/1436/ho...ronic.html

[Thumpalumpacus]

It looks as if that Swedish study is including diagnosed family members in their counting.