Depression + anxiety x madness = genius?

 

The painter, who died 70 years ago today, created one of the most recognized masterpieces in history, "The Scream", which came to him in a sinister vision as he stood on the edges of Oslofjord.

"The sun began to set - suddenly the sky turned blood red," he wrote. "I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature."

The painting is thought to represent the angst of modern man, which Munch experienced deeply throughout his life, but saw as an indispensable driver of his art. He wrote in his diary: "My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art."

Munch may be one of the most high profile artists to walk the line between extreme talent and torment, but he is not the only one.

Vincent van Gogh, who cut of his ear after an argument with his friend Paul Gauguin, and later killed himself, swayed heavily between genius and madness.

In a letter to his brother Theo in 1888 he wrote: "I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me. Now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head... at times I have attacks of melancholy and of atrocious remorse."

These painters' personal struggles still echo in popular culture today, and have given rise to the belief that artists are more susceptible to a range of mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

A growing body of research suggests that there is merit to that popular assumption. Madness may lurk where creativity lies.

Using a registry of psychiatric patients, they tracked nearly 1.2 million Swedes and their relatives. The patients demonstrated conditions ranging from schizophrenia and depression to ADHD and anxiety syndromes.

They found that people working in creative fields, including dancers, photographers and authors, were 8% more likely to live with bipolar disorder. Writers were a staggering 121% more likely to suffer from the condition, and nearly 50% more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

They also found that people in creative professions were more likely to have relatives with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia and autism.

That is significant. Earlier studies on families have suggested that there could be an inherited trait that gives rise to both creativity and mental illness.

Some people may inherit a form of the trait that fosters creativity without the burden of mental illness, while others may inherit an amped-up version that stokes anxiety, depression and hallucinations.

Psychologists have established a link between mental illness and creativity, but they are still piecing together the mechanisms that underlie it.