Reducing Creativity With Psychostimulants May Debilitate Mental Health and Well-Being

Abstract

Recently, healthy individuals have been using psychostimulants for cognitive enhancement purposes. Psychostimulant medications may increase wakefulness, but as a tradeoff, they may constrict cognitive flexibility and reduce creativity in healthy individuals with no psychiatric disorders. In this perspective, the author addresses the ethical and prudential issues that arise from impairing creativity with psychostimulants. As there is a strong relationship between creativity and positive mental health, the author argues that creativity is an important character strength. Hence, reducing it with psychostimulants will impair an intrinsically and instrumentally valuable trait, which will in the long term reduce well-being and negatively impact the positive mental health of the healthy individual and the flourishing of society. The author concludes that using psychostimulants as a form of cognitive enhancement in healthy adults is imprudent and morally suspect for society.PERSPECTIVES is a special feature included in this issue of Journal of Creativity in Mental Health that provides mental health professionals with an opportunity to discuss their positions on a variety of creativity-related topics.In this article, Dr. Mohamed shares his view of the ethical and prudential issues that arise from impairing creativity with psychostimulants.Dr. Ahmed Dahir Mohamed is a chartered psychologist member of the British Psychological Society. His Ph.D., which was awarded in 2013 by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, was in the area of cognitive enhancement. Using modafinil as a pharmacological probe, his work explored how drugs like modafinil, Adderall, and methylphenidate (Ritalin) affect cognitive and affective functions in healthy individuals with no psychiatric disorders. His work has been published in highly regarded academic journals including the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, The American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience, The Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, and The British Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Dr. Mohamed was the previous winner of the Nuffield Science Bursary Award for outstanding research in psychology and the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Neuroscience studentship award. In 2013, Dr. Mohamed became an Elected Life Academic Member of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Mohamed is currently editing an Oxford University Press handbook entitled Rethinking Cognitive Enhancement: The Neuroscience and Ethics of Cognitive and Physical Enhancement.This article is based on an invited lecture given at the St. Cross Ethics Seminars at Oxford. Dr Mohamed was a visiting academic scholar at St. Cross College and a recognized DPhil student at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics at the University of Oxford.