The Swedes
are at it again—studying who’s nuts and who’s not. According to research done
by the Karolinska
Institutet in Stockholm, creative people are treated more often for mental
illness than others.
Well,
brilliant deduction, Sven et al.
It only took
a study of 1.2 million people to figure that out, did it? I could have named
that tune in two notes. … Literally, just give me two notes written by a
creative person, and I could have told you they’re generally bonkers. I
wouldn’t even have had to read them.
First of
all, creative professions are not something rational people pursue. They
historically pay a pittance. And anecdotally, everyone says they can do the job
better. What normal person would do that to himself or herself? Whether you
paint, draw, dance, act, write, or trip the light scientific, everyone is a
critic. (Some people even think they can do a better job at studying the
correlation of mental illness and creative professionals. Jeesh. The nerve. )
You want to
be an artist? You must be nuts.
Second of
all, what profession isn’t creative? With tax codes the way they are,
accounting may be the most creative job out there. Politicians and customer
service representatives make things up all the time. Detectives recreate crime scenes.
Bus drivers think they can send their wives to the moon with a single
punch. Even ditch diggers are creative. After all, they’re creating
ditches.
The
syllogism is easy. If everyone is creative and creative people are more prone
to mental illness, everyone is a little nutty.
It’s nice
to belong to a big common social group, isn’t it?
I would
argue that it’s not just people. Animals are crackers, too. For instance,
I recently gave my cat some flea powder. Now she can magically play all Red Hot
Chili Pepper songs on the bass. That’s pretty creative. Moreover, it’s
downright insane.
 |
| My cat plays bass. But she prefers slapping a salmon. |
So I don’t
mind the Karloninska Institutet—whose sports teams are, by the way, the
Fighting Turnips (Go, Nips!)—saying that creative people have issues. We all
have issues.
But the
study goes further and says there's “a particularly salient connection
between writing and schizophrenia.”
I’ve been
arguing myself over this one.
In a
nutshell, the argument goes as follows: I’m the sanest person I know. And
that’s hard to take given this study. Surely, my sanity hinders my creativity. So
that’s depressing.
But
depression is a mental illness, right? So maybe there’s hope for me after all.
