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Professional creativity associated with mental illness

Individuals with creative professions were more likely to have mental illness, researchers from Sweden reported. In particular, authors were more likely to have schizophrenia and a range of other mental disorders.

The study results build on previous research, which demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were overrepresented in creative occupations overall. The researchers expanded the present study to survey other disorders, including schizoaffective disorder, depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anorexia nervosa, suicide and autism.

Simon Kyaga, MD, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and colleagues conducted a nested case-control study that included 1,173,763 participants enrolled in the Swedish total population registries. The researchers compared patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and their healthy relatives to the general population. Scientific and artistic occupations were defined as creative professions. These included dancers, photographers, researchers and authors, for example. Diagnoses of psychiatric disorders were based on the International Classification of Diseases.

In this study, those in overall creative professions were not more likely to have psychiatric disorders, with the exception of bipolar disorder. However, authors were more than twice as likely as controls to have schizophrenia (OR=2.09; 95% CI, 1.35-3.23) and bipolar disorder (OR=2.21; 95% CI, 1.50-3.26). This population was also more likely to be diagnosed with unipolar depression (OR=1.54; 95% CI, 1.30-1.81), anxiety disorders (OR=1.38; 95%CI, 1.03-1.86), alcohol abuse (OR=1.47; 95% CI, 1.25-1.74), drug abuse (OR=1.53; 95% CI, 1.09-2.16) and to commit suicide (OR=1.49; 95% CI, 1.08-2.05).

Consistent with their earlier research, Kyaga and colleagues found that first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa and, to a lesser degree, autism were significantly overrepresented in creative professions.

According to the researchers, the results have important clinical implications.

“If one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patient’s illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment,” Kyaga said in a press release. “In that case, the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost. In psychiatry and medicine generally there has been a tradition to see the disease in black-and-white terms and to endeavor to treat the patient by removing everything regarded as morbid.”

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.