Creativity and Mental Health

Creativity has a Relationship to Mental Health You Might Not Know About

Creativity and Mental Health

You might know about mental health and creativity through art therapy. You might know of creative geniuses that struggled to thrive. Through extensive research in the fields of creativity and art therapy, creativity has been linked to both mental health and illness (Sawyer, 2006). How can the relationship between mental health and creativity be so dichotomous? From an evolutionary perspective, perhaps the survival of mental illness is partly due to the beneficial link of mental health with creativity (Lee, 2007). What is the relationship between creativity and mental health?  Is creativity more closely linked with mental wellness, or mental illness? I believe the relationship of creativity to mental illness and mental wellness can be explained by an elevated mood as a result of the creative process. This is especially true in creative individuals.

Creativity and Mental Illness

The relationship between creativity and mental illness has been recognized since the time of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle said, “No great genius has ever been without some madness” (Anderegg, 2001). Today, there are an unusually large percentage of creative individuals with mood disorders: as high as 50% in the visual arts (Lee, 2007). In the 1950’s, Amabile (1993) proposed that the central theoretical notion relating psychology and creativity was the feature of original ideas. According to Amabile, symptomatic individuals and creative individuals share an elevated capacity to engage in unique and original thinking.

Giles (2006) also supported Eysenck’s view of personality theory in creative individuals. Giles (2006) found that creativity was more closely related to  over-inclusive thinking styles are a potential link between creativity and the personality trait of Psychotocism. Carson (2001) examined biographical and empirical data and found a strong connection between creativity and symptoms. Specifically, he found higher scores of this personality trait among creative visual artists. While one body of research delineated and defined the relationship between creativity and personality, this research led to a second important body of work: research exploring the link between mood disorders and the creative process.

Anderegg (2001) correlated mood disorders with creativity. Anderegg studied case examples of creative individuals with bipolar disorder. He reported a strong positive correlation between mood disorders and creative behavior. Most manic depressives interviewed by Anderegg felt more productive during the manic phase of bipolar disorder. However, they also failed to differentiate between their manic and depressive states. This led them to include periods from their depressive states when defining heightened periods of productivity in their creative process. Anderegg hypothesized that, the inability of bipolar individuals to differentiate between the stages of bipolar disorder resulted in higher rates of creativity: manic and depressive phases of bipolar disorder were merged into one phase of intense creative energy. 

Richards, Kinney, Lunde and Benet (1988) also looked at the relationship between creativity and bipolar individuals. Their study looked specifically at creative writers. They found a higher level of creativity among those experiencing mood disorders. Andreason and Powers (1975) linked bipolar patients in the manic stage with higher levels of creativity. Andreason and Powers (1975) also found first degree relatives of writers were more likely to both be creative and have affective disorders. This suggests a biological connection between higher levels of creativity and mood disorders as opposed to affective disorder and normal creativity levels. 

Clinical measures of Neuroticism, Dysthemia, and cyclothemia were also positively correlated with creativity measures (Strong, Nowakowska, Santosa, Wang, Kraemer and Ketter, 2006). In their study, Strong and colleagues measured levels of creativity in mood disorder inpatients. Strong and colleagues concluded that there is strong evidence linking creative personality traits with both personality traits related to mood disorder, as well as certain mood disorder participants.
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Higher levels of creativity have also been found in depressed populations (Kaufman, 2002). Similar to the techniques used by Strong and colleagues (2006), Kaufman (2002) measured creative levels within a clinically depressed population. He found that not only are mood disorder patients in manic phases more likely to be creative, but that clinically depressed mood disorder patients are linked to higher levels of creativity as well. 

In 2000, O’Reilly, Dunbar and Bentall brought the two bodies of research on creativity of schizotypal mental illness on one hand, and mood disorders on the other, together. They found a higher level of divergent thinking scores as well as unusual experience scores in creative students in the visual arts. According to O’Reilly and colleagues, pronounced divergent thinking as well as unusual experiences is experienced in a higher frequency by mood disorder patients, as well as patient suffering from psychotic symptoms. In other words, there are personality traits shared across symptomologic creative individuals. 

A few studies look at the creative process and its relationship to creative mood disordered individuals. Bruniori, Magnani and Raggi (2007) suggested mental illness and creativity share a more developed reflective function leading to insight.  Verhaeghen, Joorman and Khan (2005) linked creative behavior with depressive symptomotology. They suggested a link through the process of rumination. Similar to the reflective function, rumination involves increased introspection and the tendency to dwell on and constantly rethink and reevaluate issues. This results in an increase in negative cognitions. Collectively, research on the creative process in mood disordered individuals implicates introspection during the creative process as an important common factor in creative and mood disordered personality traits. 

Together, research on creativity and mental illness do two important things:  first, they solidify the relationship of specific symptomotology with creative personality;  second, they specify its application to the creative processes of those creative people.

Creative Practice

Creativity has been associated with healing and mental wellness: highly creative and normal people alike benefit from the creative process (Henderson, 2007). For example, creative individuals with mood disorders harness their experiences and use them productively in the creative process (Lee, 2007). Carl Jung was one of the first believers in this healing process of creativity in art and art therapy. He used a drawing technique called the drawing of mandalas to reduce trauma symptoms (Henderson, 2007). A mandala is a circular shape with objects drawn inside that are relevant and important to each participant. According to Jung, the drawing of mandalas had a calming effect on the participant and facilitated psychic integration in a therapeutic setting. Henderson (2007) repeated Jung’s study using PTSD patients and replicated Jung’s findings of the benefits of mandala drawings (Henderson, 2007).

The Science of Creativity

In addition to Jung’s early empirical study, the benefits of the creative process in terms of art therapy have been noted in case studies. Bohart (1999) reported art therapy techniques led to better communication through symbols in therapeutic settings. According to Bohart, symbols are a more effective method of communication than words because the world is experienced in symbols and not words. Bohart also stated that art therapy is especially useful for creative individuals. This is because creativity is related to intuitive knowing from experiential, visual and non-conceptual knowledge such as aesthetics, and to the expression of this knowledge without words such as in visual arts. Bohart presents examples of intuition and symbols in creative individuals in art therapy through the lens of constructivism. Constructivism assumes that we are constantly building our reality through our experience of the world through our senses. Specifically, Bohart describes the case of an artist named David who uses visual art as symbolic communication to detect unnoticed patterns of behavior in therapy. David also uses visual arts to better describe and understand his experiences and revise maladaptive behavior patterns.

Creativity Benefits

Gedo (1990) utilized art therapy techniques to give meaning to experiences. With the case study of an artist named James Ensor, Gedo illustrated the use of different visual stylistic techniques to emphasize different moods. These techniques were in turn used to confine and explain important experiences. This supports the Jungian notion that visual characteristics are representational of inner cognitions and feelings (Gedo, 1990). In his study, Gedo defined two styles of visual therapeutic artwork: content specific, and not content specific. Content specific work refers to work where the visual content directly relates to a meaningful experience or feeling to the artist. Not content specific work refers to work that does not directly relate or refer to specific experiences or feelings. Speiser and Speiser (2007) found that visual arts enhance communication and expression for working through conflict. Turetsky (2003) also used art psychotherapy as an effective method to help cope with the mourning process during midlife transitions. Together these studies demonstrate the function of creative processes as seen in art therapy techniques to increase mood in times of crisis and conflict.

Creativity Research

Using artist interviews, Spaniol (2001) looked at the healing power of creativity from the perspective of artists living with mental illnesses. This study looked at art therapy through a psychodynamic perspective- that pictures translated inner thoughts and feelings through mechanisms of displacement. In this way, art therapy serves as a method of psychological insight for artists. The study supports the use of art therapy as a way to gain personal insight and understanding. Better understanding of the self can be accomplished through imagery (Lee, 2007). Lee (2007) also looked at the benefits of the creative process in people with mood disorders. According to personal interviews of participants in his study, over one half of mood disorder patients found creative activities helpful in reducing mood disorder symptoms (Lee, 2007).

Creativity Matters

There are important additional benefits of the creative process for creative individuals. Carson (2001) linked creativity with mental wellness, especially in creative personality types. He postulated that a larger capacity of working memory in creative individuals would prevent psychological vulnerability. According to this notion, creative individuals have a larger working memory than normal individuals, and this larger working memory capacity is associated with symptom prevention. While a strong positive correlation between creativity and mental illness is noted, a larger working memory is seen as a protective factor for creative individuals against mental illness. 
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Another important benefit of the creative process for creative individuals was described by Csikszentimihalyi (1996).  Csikszentimihalyi described the intense gratification, sense of investment and therapeutic nature of creative processes as “flow.”  He further explained the more invested a person is in the creative effort, the greater the flow, and therefore the greater the therapeutic benefit. In this way, creative activities are more therapeutic to artists and creative individuals to whom the creative process is more relevant. Positive effects of creative people working within their creative medium include enthusiasm, energy, self-confidence, increased mental association, flowing of thoughts, euphoria, increased concentration, well-being, rapid thinking and sensory awareness (Lee, 2007).

Creativity in Creative People

Creativity has several links to mental wellness through the creative process: calmness and an overall increased mood, enhanced communication, understanding and insight, emotional exploration, a reduction of depressive symptoms, and new meaning to old experiences.  Specifically, creative personality types experience two added benefits of the creative process: first, investment, fulfillment and intense gratification characteristic of  “flow,” and second, the additional protective factor against depressive symptomotology from a larger working memory.  

Through extensive research in the field of creativity, creativity has been linked to both mental health and illness (Sawyer, 2006). How can the relationship between mental health and creativity be so dichotomous? From an evolutionary perspective, perhaps the survival of mental illness is partly due to the beneficial link of mental health with creativity (Lee, 2007). What is the relationship between creativity and mental health?  Is creativity more closely linked with mental wellness, or mental illness? I believe that the relationship of creativity to mental illness and mental wellness can be explained by an elevated mood as a result of the creative process. This is especially true in creative individuals. While the creative process may be beneficial in many settings, and mental illness does not require a personality trait of creativity, the coexistence of the two implicates a built-in behavioral coping technique for creative individuals with affective disorders. That is to say the link between creativity and mental wellness and mental illness is explained by the creative process as a behavioral adaptation for creative individuals with mental illness. This has important implications in terms of the relationship of mental illness as compared to mental wellness in clinical populations, as well as how changes in negative mood states as seen in these disorders can occur in non-clinical populations.

Creative People Need to Create

This is truly a summation of my own research into creativity, mental health, mental wellness, and their relationship to each other.  I have also run my own interventions in experimental settings, with my own controls, multi factor analysis and more to confirm my hypotheses (which were strongly confirmed!).  What I want to share with you is that this research is the foundation to my 3-part philosophy for healing: 

1. You have a Creative Personality- Understand it
2. Understand the relationship of your Creative Personality to your Mental Health
3. Establish and support your mental health with a regular creative practice

This is a simple, yet life-changing formula, founded in years of research and practice.  I am passionate about changing the lives of Creative People!  If you are inspired or moved by what you have read here, or if you have questions about any of this material, I would love to connect with you. Here are 3 steps you can take right now, today, on the road to Creative Health: 

1. Learn more about your Creative Personality
2. Book an Initial Free Consultation
3. Learn about and book one of my 3 prepared Coaching Packages

Investing in yourself is the surest investment you can make.  Let’s talk more about how to change your life, today!


(c) Creatively, LLC 2022
​www.creativelyllc.com

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