LB: Congrats, Creative Bros & Sisters, These Guys Say We’re All Nuts

Back in college, my parents made me visit a psychologist because they wanted me to get along better with others. During the first session, after she and I had talked for awhile she started writing away on her notepad.

When I asked what she was writing, the psychologist said, “My diagnosis.”

“Already? How can you do that so soon?” I said.

“Well, you told me you were a writer,” she said. “That makes you OCD with schizophrenic tendencies. All creative people are.”

That was almost 50 years ago, people, and the Swedes are just getting around to proving it now?

Anyway:

Creativity Tied To Mental Illnesses Like Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia In New Swedish Study

Creative types are thought to be more likely to suffer from mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. A new large-scale study of the Swedish population helps confirm this link.

Last year, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet near Stockholm found that families with a history of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were more likely to produce artists and scientists. They built on this evidence in a new study, published this month in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, which covers a larger population sample and a wider scope of psychiatric diagnoses.

The researchers used 40-years’ worth of data from Sweden’s health registry, looking at the anonymous records of almost 1.2 million patients and their relatives. They found certain mental illness — in particular bipolar disorder — are more common among artists and scientists, from dancers and photographers to researchers and authors.

Writers specifically were more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and substance abuse, and they were almost 50 percent more likely to commit suicide than the general population, the study found.

Creative types also were more likely to have family members being treated for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia and autism.

Read it all

Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

Oh, FTR: That first visit to the shrink was also my last. And I’m never, ever going to take any psychological tests in Sweden, that’s for sure.

Author: LB

A legendary figure in the television writing and production world with a career going back to the late ’60s, Larry Brody has written and produced hundreds of hours of American and worldwide television and is a consultant to production companies and networks in the U.S. and abroad . Shows written or produced by Brody have won several awards including - yes, it's true - Emmys, Writers Guild Awards, and the Humanitas Award. View all posts by LB