The writing life: Creativity and mental health

Abstract

Creativity is a solitary pursuit; there is a lack of social interaction, long working hours, lack of exercise and this life can lead to depression. Eminent people across fields including literature and art suffer from mental illness. It has been established that writers become depressed or turn to drug addict and have suicidal tendencies because of the stresses of being a writer. There are many examples of striking association between creativity and mental health. Samuel Taylor Coleridge composed the poem Kubla Khan one night after he experienced an opium influenced dream. When we think of creative writers we think of individuals who are highly sensitive to stimuli both from the outside and inside. They are bold, restless, discontent and this is the temperament of manic depressive people. Writers have a history of mood disorders, there are many who have been diagnosed with manic depressive and hypo-mania and bipolar disorder, they have also been drawn to suicide and death. Great writing requires original thinking and thoughtful reorganization of varied experiences and thought. They have a constantly active brain; there is always a flood of thoughts going on in their minds. They can be lost in the world of fantasy. Manic thinking flows freely and includes loose and novel associations. When engaged in creative tasks writers have a superior power of concentration, unusual intensity of focus which is much higher than ordinary individuals. Along with this, there is stress in their life related to constant rejection, unpredictability, unusually low income. They have a higher familiarity with pain, misery and suffering and most of them experience this during the process of their writing. Writing is a form of expressive therapy for many writers; it is a cathartic outpouring of emotions. The present paper will largely focus on the creative writers and their writing lives which is associated with depression and manic depression. The case studies of their lives will be studied to establish some of the causes of these mental disorders.