The epidemiological study adds weight to the argument that creativity is linked to madness.
Among almost 4.5 million Swedish people, those studying creative subjects were also 62% more likely to be hospitalised for bipolar disorder.
Similarly, they were 39% more likely to be hospitalised for depression.
Hospitalisations were most likely to occur when the person reached their 30s.
Comment: Yes, but these numbers are meaningless unless we understand what the actual numbers are. How many people NOT studying creative subjects were hospitalized for bipolar disorder - this number makes the results more relevant. If the number were for example 10 in 4.5 million and there is a 62% increased chance of the same if studying creative subjects then the change is insignificant. Context is everything when looking at results from epidemiological studies.
Those in the visual arts - like painters, designers, photographers and so on - had the strongest link to mental illness.
The authors write:
"...the association with mental illness was strongest for core creative subjects, especially for visual arts.The study was published in the The British Journal of Psychiatry (MacCabe et al., 2018).
It is notable that, in the visual arts, most if not all practitioners are engaged in the creative process, whereas performing arts place more emphasis on interpretation.
Hence, the core creative subjects, particularly visual arts, may capture the concept of creativity most closely, supporting the idea that mental disorder is associated with creativity per se."
Reader Comments
A brain with more going on inside it, making more and wider-ranging connections, is like an extra-clever watch mechanism. There's more which can go wrong.
FWIW, the craziest artists, the ones who crash and burn, tend to also be the ones who haven't done the work required to build clean belief systems free of bullshit and lies and broken logic snares. If you spend your life pampering your brain with lies, not addressing and working through the hard stuff, -and not having the social networks required to pull you back on the rails if you run with a potentially dangerous mind experiment, then you'll just end up cultivating a mind riddled with holes and thought cancers. It'll catch up to you eventually.
Also, a good diet and a toxin-free lifestyle (where you get enough sleep) are super important!
There are plenty of ways to lose your mind if you don't actively work to keep it.
I submit that a great many regular people who are running simple mechanisms between their ears, while they may not necessarily look or sound crazy (when restricted to their controlled lives and routines), would probably come off as absolute lunatics and unravel were they suddenly elevated to the kinds of mind spaces artists regularly inhabit. They won't have built the necessary systems to deal with that much input and neural cross talk.
Artists aren't necessarily more crazy than everybody else. They just have the kinds of minds where a little crazy goes a longer way.
Really, who cares anyway? And what's the benchmark? I think the whole fucking world is batshit crazy.