‘Creativity is often part of a mental illness according to a study of more than a million people’, BBC News has reported.
The image of the tortured artist or the visionary genius beset by personal demons has long been part of our popular culture. But are ‘creatives’ really more prone to mental illness than say, bricklayers or book-keepers?
In an attempt to answer the question, researchers used Swedish health records to identify more than a million people diagnosed with various mental illnesses. They compared the occurrence of creative occupations among these people with that of a matched sample of ‘healthy’ people.