creativity and mental health creativity and mental health links between creativity and mental health have been extensively discussed and studied by psychologists and other researchers for centuries. parallels can be drawn to connect creativity to major mental disorders including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, ocd and adhd. for example, studies have demonstrated correlations between creative occupations and people living with mental illness. there are cases that support the idea that mental illness can aid in creativity, but it is also generally agreed that mental illness does not have to be present for creativity to exist. composer ludwig van beethoven may have had bipolar disorder. history it has been proposed that there is a link between creativity and mental illness. major depressive disorder appears among playwrights, novelists, biographers, and artists at a higher rate than the general population. association between mental illness and creativity first appeared in academic literature in the 1970s, but speculation about a link between "madness" and "genius" dates back at least to the time of aristotle. the word "genius" may refer to literary genius, creative genius, scholarly genius, "all around" genius, etc. the ancient greeks believed that creativity came from the gods, in particular the muses (the mythical personifications of the arts and sciences, the nine daughters of zeus). in the aristotelian tradition, genius was viewed from a physiological standpoint, and it was believed that the same human quality was perhaps responsible for both extraordinary achievement and melancholy. romantic writers had similar ideals, with lord byron having pleasantly expressed, "we of the craft are all crazy. some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched". individuals with mental illness are said to display a capacity to see the world in a novel and original way; literally, to see things that others cannot. however, people do not require a mental illness to do so. studies for many years, the creative arts, from visual arts and writing to music and drama, have been used in therapy for those recovering from mental illness or addiction. another study found that increased levels of creativity were more common amongst those with schizotypal personality disorder than in people with either schizophrenia or people without mental health diagnoses. while divergent thinking was associated with bilateral activation of the prefrontal cortex, schizotypal individuals were found to have much greater activation of their right prefrontal cortex. this study hypothesized that such individuals are better at accessing both hemispheres, allowing them to make novel associations at a faster rate. consistent with this hypothesis, ambidexterity is also more common in people with schizotypal personality disorder as well as people with schizophrenia. three studies by mark batey and adrian furnham have demonstrated the relationships between schizotypal and hypomanic personality and several different measures of creativity. specifically, divergent thinking fluency, the biographical inventory of creative behaviors, as well as self-rated creativity. particularly strong links have been identified between creativity and mood disorders, particularly manic-depressive disorder (a.k.a. bipolar disorder) and depressive disorder (a.k.a. unipolar disorder). in touched with fire: manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament, kay redfield jamison summarizes studies of mood-disorder rates in writers, poets and artists. she also explores research that identifies mood disorders in such famous writers and artists as ernest hemingway (who shot himself after electroconvulsive treatment), virginia woolf (who drowned herself when she felt a depressive episode coming on), composer robert schumann (who died in a mental institution), and even the famed visual artist michelangelo. a study by simon kyaga and others looked at 300,000 people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or unipolar depression, and their relatives, found overrepresentation in creative professions for those with bipolar disorder as well as for undiagnosed siblings of those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. there was no overall overrepresentation, but overrepresentation for artistic occupations, among those diagnosed with schizophrenia. there was no association for those with unipolar depression or their relatives. a study involving more than one million people, conducted by swedish researchers at the karolinska institute, reported a number of correlations between creative occupations and mental illnesses. writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, and were almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves. dancers and photographers were also more likely to have bipolar disorder. however, as a broader group, those in the creative professions (defined as "scientific and artistic occupations") were no more likely to experience psychiatric disorders than other people, although they were more likely to have a close relative with a disorder, including anorexia and, to some extent, autism, the journal of psychiatric research reports. research in this area is usually constrained to cross-section data-sets. one of the few exceptions is an economic study of the well-being and creative output of three famous music composers over their entire lifetime. the emotional indicators are obtained from letters written by wolfgang amadeus mozart, ludwig van beethoven and franz liszt, and the results indicate that negative emotions had a causal impact on the creative production of the artists studied. psychological stress has also been found to impede spontaneous creativity. in fact, robert epstein describes it as a creativity killer. instead, people must work to cultivate creativity like any other skill. he found that capturing your ideas, seeking out challenges, increasing your knowledge, and surrounding yourself with others who do the same help creativity grow rather than focusing on your stress. a 2005 study at the stanford university school of medicine measured creativity by showing children figures of varying complexity and symmetry and asking whether they like or dislike them. the study showed for the first time that a sample of children who either have or are at high risk for bipolar disorder tend to dislike simple or symmetric symbols more. children with bipolar parents who were not bipolar themselves also scored higher dislike scores. a study by sally anne gross and george musgrave suggested that high levels of self-reported anxiety and depression amongst musicians might be explained, at least in part, by the nature of their working conditions. mood and creativity there have been many studies on the correlation between mood and creativity with very different results. some studies seem to show a correlation between positive mood (affect) and heightened creativity. other studies show that negative moods seem to be correlated with heightened creativity. one such research paper concludes, "negative moods signal that the status quo is problematic and that additional effort needs to be exerted to come up with new and useful ideas". the debate is not binary with some studies saying that both positive and negative emotions play a role in creativity "the data support a positive-mood-enhances creativity generalization. although other components of the creative process suggest a role for negative mood...". what is clear is that the connection between mood and creativity is rarely direct; rather, it's that being in certain moods forces or fosters people into certain actions that make them more creative at the moment. for instance, negative emotions have been shown to increase the amount a person will reflect and ruminate which then can cause a person to be more creative. studying creativity has its challenges because creativity doesn't necessarily involve action, which is a necessary component for proper research. what is actually being studied is, more appropriately called, "creative drive" which would be people's motivation to do things such as speaking, writing, problem-solving, etc. ultimately, this topic requires more research to make any definitive statement on how much negative or positive emotion affects one's creative drive. this reflects a statement made in a 2008 meta-analysis on mood creativity research that said "herein lie important avenues for future research, which eventually will tell us when and why angry young men, happy campers, and sad loners create and innovate." bipolar disorder main article: bipolar disorder bipolar disorder may stimulate creativity, as manic episodes can include prolonged periods of elevated energy. the first empirical study about this topic was done by nancy andreasen in the 1970s. she expected for the correlation to be between creativity and schizophrenia. she instead discovered that the correlation was actually between creativity and those with mood disorders. specifically, that 80% of her sample had experienced at least one major episode. in her follow-up study 15 years later, she found that 43% had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and 2 had committed suicide. in her book touched with fire, american clinical psychologist kay redfield jamison wrote that 38% of writers and poets had been treated for a type of mood disorder, and 89% of creative writers and artists had experienced "intense, highly productive, and creative episodes". these were characterized by "pronounced increases in enthusiasm, energy, self-confidence, speed of mental association, fluency of thought and elevated mood". although mania is characterized by reckless and possibly self-destructive behavior, in milder forms, the energy and free-flowing thinking of mania can fuel creativity. there is a range of types of bipolar disorder. individuals with bipolar i disorder experience severe episodes of mania and depression with periods of wellness between episodes. the severity of the manic episodes can mean that the person is seriously disabled and unable to express the heightened perceptions and flight of thoughts and ideas in a practical way. individuals with bipolar ii disorder experience milder periods of hypomania during which the flight of ideas, faster thought processes and ability to take in more information can be converted to art, poetry or design. in a study done by shapiro and weisberg, they found that it was not the depressive episodes, but rather coming out of them that sparked the creativity. specifically, the self-image that one has during hypomania causing them to be more self-confident and allows them to have the confidence to create. dutch artist vincent van gogh is widely theorised to have had bipolar disorder. other notable creative people with bipolar disorder include carrie fisher, demi lovato, kanye west, stephen fry (who has cyclothymia, a milder and more chronic form of bipolar disorder), mariah carey, jaco pastorius, catherine zeta-jones, jean-claude van damme, ronald braunstein, and patty duke. schizophrenia main article: schizophrenia people with schizophrenia live with positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. positive symptoms (psychotic behaviors that are not present in healthy people) include hallucinations, delusions, thought and movement disorders. negative symptoms (abnormal functioning of emotions and behavior) include flat affect, anhedonia, others. cognitive symptoms include problems with executive functioning, attention, and memory. one artist known for his schizophrenia was the frenchman antonin artaud, founder of the theatre of cruelty movement. in madness and modernism (1992), clinical psychologist louis a. sass noted that many common traits of schizophrenia – especially fragmentation, defiance of authority, and multiple viewpoints – happen to also be defining features of modern art. however, it has been found that those who have it are the most creative either before or after active periods, not during them. multiple research studies study a link between reduced latent inhibition, and the psychopathology of acute-phase schizophrenia. this is suggestive of a correlation between psychopathology and creativity, but should not be interpreted as a causal relationship. arguments that support link in a 2002 conversation with christopher langan, educational psychologist arthur jensen stated that the relationship between creativity and mental disorder "has been well researched and is proven to be a fact", writing that schizothymic characteristics are somewhat more frequent in philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists than in the general population. in a 2015 study, iceland scientists found that people in creative professions are 25% more likely to have gene variants that increase the risk of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, with decode genetics co-founder kári stefánsson saying, "often, when people are creating something new, they end up straddling between sanity and insanity. i think these results support the concept of the mad genius." bipolar disorder many famous historical figures gifted with creative talents may have been affected by bipolar disorder. ludwig van beethoven, virginia woolf, ernest hemingway, isaac newton, judy garland, jaco pastorius and robert schumann are some people whose lives have been researched to discover signs of mood disorder. in many instances, creativity and mania - the overwhelming highs that bipolar individuals often experience - share some common traits, such as a tendency for "thinking outside the box," flights of ideas, the speeding up of thoughts and heightened perception of visual, auditory and