Researchers in the US have confirmed the link between creative genius and mental illness. Their new study shows that highly creative artists have temperaments more akin to manic depressives than to the general public.
The fine line between genius and madness was depicted in the award-winning film, A Beautiful Mind, which tells the story of Nobel Laureate John Nash. He created models which allowed complex economic systems to be defined but for much of his life suffered from delusions and lived amongst imaginary people.
Most people accept this fine line as fact although very few scientific studies have been done to prove it. This new study is groundbreaking for psychiatric research in that it used separate control groups made up of both healthy, creative people and people from the general population to assess the connections with manic depressives.
Scientists have known for decades that eminently creative individuals have a much higher rate of manic depression, or bipolar disorder, than the general population. The study, by Dr Connie Strong and Dr Terence Ketter, of Stanford University, California, begins to define the link between genius and mental disorder.
The team administered stan- dard personality, temperament and creativity tests to 47 people in the healthy control group, 48 patients with successfully treat- ed bipolar disorder and 25 patients successfully treated for depression. Dr Strong also tested 32 people in a healthy, creative control group. She presented her preliminary results this week at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Philadelphia.
The early result suggested that healthy artists were more similar in personality to people with manic depression than they were to people in the general population. Creative individuals and manic depressives were more open and tended to be moodier and more neurotic than healthy controls. Stanford itself was able to provide the subjects for the healthy, creative control group. These 32 people included graduate students enrolled in prestige courses in product design, creative writing and fine arts.
"My hunch is that emotional range, having an emotional broadband, is the bipolar patient's advantage," stated Dr Strong. "It isn't the only thing going on, but something gives people with manic depression an edge, and I think it is emotional range."
She believes that the data provides a "roadmap" for psychiatric researchers looking to solve the genius/madness paradox as depicted in A Beautiful Mind.