Emotional Health & Creative People

People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, there being a particularly salient connection between writing and schizophrenia. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet, whose large-scale Swedish registry study is the most comprehensive ever in its field.

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See related post

http://www.scoop.it/t/mental-health-creativity/p/3003724898/study-alert-mental-illness-suicide-and-creativity-40-year-prospective-total-population-study

Artists use all of who they are as the wellspring of their creativity, perhaps especially their difficult emotions and mental health challenges.

A special section of Nature traces the emerging links between stress and mental illness.

A battlefield; an abusive parent; the ongoing struggle to make ends meet; a pile-up of unanswered e-mails — stress can take many forms. But stressful situations have something in common: they trigger reactions such as fear and a surge of hormones. These responses can be beneficial in the short term but, if severe or prolonged, can damage the mind, triggering conditions ranging from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Includes links to more articles, including resilience

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Related:

Dealing with trauma and abuse to live a bigger, more creative life

http://talentdevelop.com/6122/

Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult

http://talentdevelop.com/6175/traumatic-childhood-creative-adult/

By Michele Rosenthal. Often, part of the PTSD experience involves depression – whether it is a mild form that lasts only a few days or a deep pit of despair that goes on for months. I know from personal experience that depression was a very real and challenging part of my posttraumatic stress symptoms. Overcoming depression wasn’t easy and I still practice my method today – pursuing joy through dance.

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Podcast by Michele Rosenthal: How to Access Your Healing Potential: Taking Control of Your Path to Recovery. A trauma survivor of a horrific medical trauma as a teenager, she struggled with PTSD for over twenty-five years, and today Michele "joyfully lives 100% free of PTSD symptoms." Listen to her at the Mental Health Telesummit http://talentdevelop.com/MHT

If you call your sadness, irritability, loneliness, disappointments, and overwhelm "the mental disorder of depression," does calling all that pain make it "the mental disorder of depression"?

Book: Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning, by Eric Maisel, PhD.
http://goo.gl/J77pc

Bipolar and other forms of depression can interfere with creative expression, but in some ways may enhance creative thinking for some people.

“I sit down religiously every morning. In the course of a working day of eight hours, I write three sentences, which I erase before leaving the table in despair. The effort I put out should give birth to Masterpieces as big as mountains, and it brings forth a ridiculous mouse now and then.” - Novelist Joseph Conrad

Stephanie Stone Horton comments: "Depression can cause severe writing blocks; depressed brains show a pronounced slowing of frontal and temporal lobe activity. Mania can spark intense creativity, but also can escalate to a functional breakdown."

Creative expression can transform our painful reactions to traumas, providing renewed strength of our identity and a way to give voice to difficult feelings.

Charlize Theron as a teen saw her mother shoot her father in self defense. She said in a 2004 interview that her work has helped her deal with it: “I think acting has healed me. I get to let it out. I get to say it and feel it in my work and I think that’s why I don’t go through my life walking with this thing, and suffering.”

BBC News. Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, say experts.

Like many highly talented artists, Sinead O'Connor has suffered from bipolar disorder. She recently had to cancel her tour.

Like many people, she has been dealing with depression for years. This is my 2007 post: “She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, or manic depression. O’Connor describes the illness as like having a gaping hole in the centre of her being… The diagnosis, and then the drugs, gave her back her creativity.”

Clara Lieu, a visual artist and art professor, expresses her personal experiences of depression and other mental health challenges through her artwork, such as her series "Falling."

"Falling is a metaphorical gesture. One day everything is fine. Then suddenly you’re falling and falling and it never really ends. I’m not doing drawings of figures that are really falling, but it’s the idea of falling. My work has never been about showing that everything’s okay.”

Out of many disguised blessings from the period of illness, one is rediscovering my creativity.

Writer nochnoch (Enoch Li) admits that she never thought she “had any creativity” – but rediscovered her talents in dealing with depression.

Psychotherapist and author Jed Diamond: “I was fortunate to get an advance copy of Eric Maisel's new book. I've been a psychotherapist for more than 40 years and treat depression every day. I've long come to see that our old way of looking at ‘mental illness’ is totally inadequate. We put more and more people on drugs while ignoring the underlying problems that feed our feelings of despair and hopelessness.

“Maisel's book shows us why the old system does not work well and why depression continues to rise despite our efforts to help people. But more importantly he gives us practical guidance on how to create a life of meaning that can make depression a thing of the past. If you are concerned about mental illness in your own life or you work with people who are suffering, you will find this book to be a breath of fresh air and hope.”

Book: Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning, by Eric Maisel, PhD. http://goo.gl/J77pc

Most people experience some trauma in life, but it may have a particularly strong impact on children, and on creative and highly sensitive people.

Photo: Michele Rosenthal, a survivor of a horrific medical trauma as a teenager, struggled with PTSD for over twenty-five years, but today she “joyfully lives 100% free of PTSD symptoms.”