Are artists more prone to mental illness?
Studies of artists and writers collated in Scientific American confirm that artists and writers are up to 20 times more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder (also called manic depressive illness) and 10 times more likely to suffer from depression.There has been very little research to actually understand the biology of creativity. So in November, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, we presented the results of our Big C project to the Society for Neuroscience of Creativity. (“Little C” creativity can be found in nearly all people; “Big C” creativity is relatively rare, involves breakthrough thinking and can be associated with greatness.) The Big C project studied differences in creativity between internationally renowned artists and scientists who have been acknowledged by their peers as showing high levels of innovation in their work. We studied 30 people in each of three groups: scientists, artists and a control group — people recruited from around UCLA who are very smart but not selected for being particularly creative.
