Proof we're all crazy

[Chilari]

According to this BBC article, a new study indicates that there is an increased chance that creative people will suffer from a mental illness.

Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people.

Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, the Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute found.

Later it asks whether being more suscepitble to mental disorders make us more likely to be writers, or being writers make us more susceptible to mental illnesses.

The suicide stats do make depressing reading however.

Thought I'd share, since it's interesting.

 

[Ankari]

You, my friend, are a Debbie Downer.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I embrace my crazy... I'd like to think it makes my art better. Yeppers, I've been through some terrible bouts of depression, and it too ke me years to learn how to ride the waves of mania and depression. I'm still learning, but some of my best work has come out of those long days where I can't stop thinking. I stay up till three sewing or drawing... it's time well spent if you ask me.

 

[CupofJoe]

I have a certificate to prove I'm sane... it's framed and on the wall at work...

 

[Sparkie]

I believe it was Jimmy Piersall who once said "I'm crazy and I've got the papers to prove it!"

In my case, the papers are actually computer files containing my stories.

 

[Amanita]

Writers' minds need to be a bit different from what some people consider "the norm" or we wouldn't spend time on something like that. The question is: Is it really necessary to call anything different from the so-called norm pathological? In some cases, where there's a danger of severe harm to one's self or others, it is but I doubt that's true about all the unusual mental states, creative people mind find themselves in.

 

[Mindfire]

That explains so much.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Well, I have suffered depression many times in my life... and also I suffer from some degrees of anxiety disorder, obsessions with many things, a dark fascination with death and some OCD thrown in as well!!

So yeah, I agree that we creative people and especially writers are all kind of crazy =)

The positive side of this can be found in the recent Alice in Wonderland film from 2010: When little Alice asks her father if she has gone mad, he replies that she is totally crazy indeed... but the secret is that All the Best people Are.

 

[Butterfly]

I take the view that it's everyone else who's crazy, and I'm the only sane person in the entire world...

 

[Weaver]

When I was 26 years old, I was told that even reading fantasy and sci-fi is a sign of mental illness.

That's okay, though - they have medications to give us that can flatten our cognitive abilities to the point where we'll never have to worry about thinking outside the (very, very small) box again, and then we'll be, if not happy (because we won't feel much of anything), at least not weird and thus an annoyance to the rest of the population.

 

[JCFarnham]

Writers' minds need to be a bit different from what some people consider "the norm" or we wouldn't spend time on something like that. The question is: Is it really necessary to call anything different from the so-called norm pathological? In some cases, where there's a danger of severe harm to one's self or others, it is but I doubt that's true about all the unusual mental states, creative people mind find themselves in.

Well professional writers are professional liers. Making stuff up for a living...

Sounds good to me

 

[WyrdMystic]

You don't have to be mad to write - it does make it more fun though

 

[brokethepoint]

Me and all my personalities clearly resent the implication that any of us are crazy.

 

[Chime85]

I already knew I was crazy. The trick we have as writters is to pen our craziness so people can relate to it.

 

[J. S. Elliot]

Well, I'm not all that surprised about the "writers are crazy" quip, though the fact that all creativity is/would be treated as mental illness would make for a very depressing, bland world if they attacked it in the medical field. I can certainly draw some similarities to what some of you have posted, though, which makes me hope that they don't develop a "cure".

 

[Weaver]

Well, I'm not all that surprised about the "writers are crazy" quip, though the fact that all creativity is/would be treated as mental illness would make for a very depressing, bland world if they attacked it in the medical field. I can certainly draw some similarities to what some of you have posted, though, which makes me hope that they don't develop a "cure".

They're already trying to find a "cure," at least for some of us.

 

[WyrdMystic]

They're already trying to find a "cure," at least for some of us.

They call it FOX News.

 

[Steerpike]

They call it FOX News.

Let's not go down that road, please. Contemporary political discussion is verboten. We have people sharing a wide variety of political viewpoints here on MS, and quips about right- or left-wing news organizations are essentially quips about political viewpoint, which never ends well. Let's just get back on the subject of whether and to what extent we're all nuts

 

[WyrdMystic]

Let's not go down that road, please. Contemporary political discussion is verboten. We have people sharing a wide variety of political viewpoints here on MS, and quips about right- or left-wing news organizations are essentially quips about political viewpoint, which never ends well. Let's just get back on the subject of whether and to what extent we're all nuts

Sorry, wasn’t trying to make a political distinction. To be honest I wouldn’t even know if they were right or left, just picked it out of the ether.

I realise everyone is unique, just like everyone else.

Also, I am nuts. At least I hope I am.

 

[Steerpike]

Sorry, wasn’t trying to make a political distinction. To be honest I wouldn’t even know if they were right or left, just picked it out of the ether.

I realise everyone is unique, just like everyone else.

Also, I am nuts. At least I hope I am.

Ah...no problem. In the U.S. the whole FOX v. MSNBC thing has been the source of more argument than I care to remember

I agree there is value in being out of the norm. Whether society deems that to be 'nuts' or not, it beats the alternative!