Creativity and Mental Illness - Positive Mood, Mental Illness and Creativity

Positive Mood, Mental Illness and Creativity

Mood-creativity research reveals that people are most creative when they are in a positive mood and that mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia actually decrease creativity. People who have worked in the field of arts throughout the history have had problems with poverty, persecution, social alienation, psychological trauma, substance abuse, high stress and other such environmental factors which are associated with developing and perhaps causing mental illness. It is thus likely that when creativity itself is associated with positive moods, happiness, and mental health, pursuing a career in the arts may bring problems with stressful environment and income. Other factors such as the centuries-old stereotype of the suffering of a "mad artist" help to fuel the link by putting expectations on how an artist should act. It also helps the field to be more attractive to those with mental illness.

Read more about this topic:  Creativity And Mental Illness

Famous quotes containing the words positive, mental, illness and/or creativity:

    Our role is to support anything positive in black life and destroy anything negative that touches it. You have no other reason for being. I don’t understand art for art’s sake. Art is the guts of the people.
    Elma Lewis (b. 1921)

    She, her head back, waited
    Barbarous the stalking tide;
    Her, nor balked nor sated
    But plunged into the wide
    Area of mental ire,
    Lay at her wandering side.
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient?
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life.
    Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)