The Link Between Creativity and Bipolar Disorder,...

THE LINK BETWEEN CREATIVITY AND BIPOLAR DISORDER The Link Between Creativity and Bipolar Disorder Creativity is related with bipolar disorder is a popular assumption. The fact that many creative people, including Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, and Sylvia Plath, suffered from some kind of mental disorders triggers that idea. Psychologists have been interested in this contingent link for decades. In this paper, after defining both terms, I examine three articles that report the results of the research concerning the potential relationship between creativity and bipolar disorder. Paulus Nijstad (2003) defined creativity as â€Å"the development of original ideas that are useful or influential†(p.3). That is to say,†¦show more content†¦The findings revealed that children with bipolar patients scored significantly higher on the creativity measure than the healthy children with healthy parents. Bipolar adults’ children had higher creativity even they did not have bipolar disorder (Chang, Ketter, Simeono va Strong, 2005). The previous research showed an association between creativity and bipolar disorder, but this is the first study that examined creativity in the offspring of bipolar patients. Simon Kyaga and colleagues conducted another study involving 1.2 million Swedish people in 2012. The participants included people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, autism and some other kinds of mental disorders. The results supported the existing evidence for the link between creativity and bipolar disorder. They found no correlation between creativity and psychopathology aside from bipolar disorder (Kyaga et al., 2012). According to the research findings, people with creative professions were %8 more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder. On the contrary, people in creative professions were considerably less likely encounter with the other conditions such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, unipolar depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, autism, ADHD, and committing suicide. However, the first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anorexia nervosa were more likely to hold creative occupations. They also demonstrated