The Connection Between Creativity and Mood Disorders Beacon NY
The Connection Between Creativity and Mood Disorders
Creative types such as Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, and John Coltrane are known as much for their genius as for the mood disorders they experienced. Several studies have identified a connection between creativity and mental illness, particularly depression and bipolar disorder, formally referred to as manic depression.
One study out of Stanford University School of Medicine showed for the first that time that children who have (or at risk for developing) a bipolar disorder got higher creativity scores than children without the same health problem.
The researchers investigated creative characteristics in 40 bipolar patients and 40 offspring and compared them with 18 healthy adults and 18 healthy offspring. Fifty percent of the children with bipolar parents also had bipolar disorder and the other half had ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), an early symptom of bipolar disorder in children whose parents have it.
The researchers included children with ADHD to investigate creativity before the full development of bipolar disorder. "We wanted to see whether having a manic episode is necessary for this sort of creativity," said Chang, who also directs the Pediatric Bipolar Disorders Program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
The participants were psychiatrically evaluated and then given the Barron-Welsh Art Scale test (BWAS) to measure creativity. It involves indicating whether you like or dislike figures of different complexity and symmetry - previous research suggests that people who are creative do not like simple and symmetric symbols...
