Written Might 27, 2011
Up to date Might 27, 2025
If Van Gogh took psychiatric medicine, would Starry Night time nonetheless exist — or would the world be a bit darker? Let’s separate romantic myths from actual science and lived expertise. Not occasionally, at Bipolar Burble, I get feedback about how if well-known artists with psychological diseases had been medicated, we wouldn’t have their artwork in the present day. Psychiatric medicine and creativity are merely perennial matters. Their go-to instance is at all times Vincent Van Gogh. With out his untreated psychological sickness, they argue, Van Gogh wouldn’t have been the nice artist we all know him to be in the present day. And if that’s true, then others shouldn’t take psychiatric medicines both, as they wish to be nice artists too.
Proper then. Let’s all go off our meds and paint. And chop off our ears.
Creativity and Psychological Sickness
There is no such thing as a doubt that being loopy makes you see issues in a brand new approach. I do know I can see issues in ways in which others can’t. It’s each a swirling profit of colours and a dramatic, lead hindrance. I’m continually coping with individuals taking a look at me in odd methods as they attempt to wrap their heads round whatever-the-heck logic my ideas try to make. It’s no imply feat.
However that’s not essentially all bipolar. That’s creativity. I used to be inventive earlier than I used to be loopy, earlier than I used to be medicated. And I’m inventive now, on psych medicine.
Why This Fantasy Persists About Psychiatric Treatment
I’ve had hypomanic occasions the place I’ve written and written and written and written. Hundreds and hundreds of phrases have poured out of my cranium. And so they have been good.
Or a minimum of, I assumed so on the time.
Hypomanic (and manic) individuals suppose they’re good. Suppose they’re unbelievably gifted and inventive. Suppose they’re geniuses. It doesn’t imply they really are. When I’ve reviewed the writings I’ve produced when hypomanic, they’re the furthest factor from good. They’re inches away from nonsensical.
Creativity and Psychiatric Treatment
Since being on psych meds, I’ve written hundreds of pages. Hundreds. Some professionally, some not, however many pretty laudable and inventive. I do have expertise, and that expertise hasn’t magically been eliminated due to psychiatric medicine.
After all, if I’m too depressed due to the bipolar to get off the sofa, that has a relatively adversarial impact on producing something, gifted or not.
Artists, Psychiatric Treatment, Creativity, and Loss of life
However so that you don’t agree with me. You will have personally discovered you’re good off meds and never on. Okay. Positive. And perhaps you suppose you’d be keen to half along with your ear to be Van Gogh. Okay. Positive.
However you may want to bear in mind some actually good individuals who killed themselves attributable to psychological sickness, together with Van Gogh, whose despair worsened over the course of his lifetime, making him unable to color, resulting in his suicide on the age of 37.
After which there are different well-known artists who died from suicide:
- Robin Williams — suicide at 63
- Kate Spade — suicide at 55
- Marilyn Monroe — suicide at 36
- Hunter S. Thompson — suicide at 67
- Sylvia Plath — suicide at 30
- Kurt Cobain — suicide at 27
- Ernest Hemingway — suicide at 62 (and simply in case you’re doubting genetics, his father, brother, and sister additionally died by suicide)
- Diane Arbus — suicide at 48
- Alexander McQueen — suicide at 41
- Virginia Woolf — suicide at 59; right here is a part of her suicide be aware to her husband:
I really feel sure that I’m going mad once more. I really feel we are able to’t undergo one other of these horrible occasions. And I shan’t get better this time. I start to listen to voices, and I can’t focus. So I’m doing what appears the perfect factor to do. . . I don’t suppose two individuals may have been happier ’til this horrible illness got here. I can’t combat any longer. . . I can’t learn.
There are, after all, an entire bunch of different gifted individuals, each identified and unknown, who had their lives lower quick by suicide as nicely.
And my guess is that the family members of each single a type of individuals want that psychiatric therapy had been out there for his or her family members. Nobody desires a portray greater than their daughter or son.
Psych Treatment Destroys Creativity and Artwork
So don’t give me the nonsense argument that medicines are “unhealthy” as a result of they hamper creativity. As a result of you realize what actually kills your creativity?
Loss of life.
I’ll go away you with this snippet of a poem about suicide that actually drives residence this level:
The Selection
by Lesléa Newman
. . .
Or you’ll be able to elevate the paring knife
from the kitchen drawer
and free the veins
that rise to fulfill the pores and skin
There is no such thing as a one
save the poems you would possibly write
Please be aware that I’m not saying that nobody has ever skilled a lower in artwork manufacturing due to being on psychiatric medicine. I’m simply saying that’s a poor excuse for not taking medicine. It actually misses the entire level. Your life is extra vital than artwork. Simply ask anybody who loves you. (Additionally, the suitable medicine can completely cut back this difficulty.)
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