What would you say if I told you that creative and crazy, in a clinical sense, were not two distinct, unrelated characteristics — that they don’t just coincide randomly once in a blue moon to make some artist lop off half his ear with a straight razor or paint “The Scream”? What if I said they might be different degrees of the same thing? Would you call me crazy?
To be honest, we still don’t know exactly how they’re related, but research has revealed an undeniable correlation.
The Karolinska Institute in Sweden released a 2012 study saying that Swedish writers were more than twice as likely to suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder than the general population, in addition to having higher risks for all sorts of other disorders.
The study, with a sample size of well over a million, also found that Swedish individuals who were immediately related to someone with any of a variety of mental disorders were significantly more likely to be in some kind of “creative occupation.” This hereditary relation might suggest an odd genetic parallel between creativity and mental illness.
In fact, past research at the Karolinska Institute has revealed telling similarities in the way creative people and schizophrenic people think. Similar dopamine systems give both groups the strange ideas and bizarre assumptions that peers later characterize as either “insane” or “genius.”
Dr. Fredrik Ullen of the institute suggested that some degree of mental illness might augment creativity. “Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box,” he said in a press release.
But how big, then, is the symptomatic gap between the two? Is there a point at which the only thing separating the artist from his schizophrenic sibling is a diagnosis?
Let’s look at it from the patient’s perspective. Karolinska scientist Simon Kyaga said the study suggests a new way of approaching mental illness. In a press release, he said if you accept that certain features of the patient’s illness might sometimes be beneficial, it means “the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost.”
This insight makes the use of forced medication and aggressive treatment that many schizophrenic patients have to suffer through today, often without any say in their medical care, seem more questionable. It suggests that patients may deserve more agency in determining their medical care.
