Creatives ‘at risk of mental illness’

Next time you take a pop at your creative department, stop before you go too far as creatives are far more highly strung than you might think and are also more likely to suffer from mental illness, a new academic study claims.
According to the report, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, writers and artists – as well musicians and dancers – are 25% more likely to carry the gene variants of mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, than their less creative peers, such as account directors and salespeople.
Researchers used medical information from 86,000 Icelanders to find genetic variants that doubled the average risk of schizophrenia, and raised the risk of bipolar disorder by more than a third.
When they looked at how common these variants were in members of national arts societies, they found a 17% increase compared with non-members.
They then checked their findings in large medical databases held in the Netherlands and Sweden.
Among these 35,000 people, those deemed to be creative – either by profession or through answers to a questionnaire – were nearly 25% more likely to carry the mental disorder variants.
Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE, a genetics company based in Reykjavik, told The Guardian: “To be creative, you have to think differently. And when we are different, we have a tendency to be labelled strange, crazy and even insane.
“Often, when people are creating something new, they end up straddling between sanity and insanity,” he added. “I think these results support the old concept of the mad genius. Creativity is a quality that has given us Mozart, Bach, Van Gogh.
“It’s a quality that is very important for our society. But it comes at a risk to the individual, and 1% of the population pays the price for it.”