Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer who became one of the most important individuals in the shift between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music. Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who is highly renowned as a vital figure in the scientific revolution. Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Miller Hemingway were American authors who greatly impacted the world of literature for works of mystery and macabre by Poe and Hemingway’s influence in 20th century fiction with his economical and inconspicuous style. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was a notable British politician who was the only Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Lastly, Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered as one of the primary modernists of the 20th century.
So, what do these aforementioned individuals have in common? Obviously, they were highly intellectual people and were even geniuses on their fields. But what else do they have in common? Behold, they were diagnosed of mental disorders of schizophrenia and bipolar disease. Schizophrenia is a very serious mental illness which impairs thinking, normal behavior and results to frequent delusional experiences while bipolar disorder is a mental illness marked by alternating moods of elation and depression. Well, we may say that this is a plausible case of geniuses and madness.
There have been numerous studies conducted to prove that there is a higher probability of mental disorders in extremely creative and intellectual people than in the overall populace. By 2012, 30 studies have been accomplished that brought into the light the relationship between mental disorder and creative genius abilities. In Sweden, a scientific study conducted to teens revealed that straight-A students were 4 times more susceptible to develop bipolar disorder. It was also observed that there was an increased activity in the frontal lobe of the brain (a part for regulating creativity), as the students’ emotional condition changed from low to high. Still in the same year, the research included more than 1 million study subjects which discovered a link between scientists, artists, and writers and susceptibility to develop mental illnesses. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, a single gene known as DARPP-32, is supposed to cause the relationship between mental illness and intelligence. It was exposed in as study that individuals with schizophrenia were more prone to have the type of DARPP-32 that enhances function on activities that comprise thinking and filtering of information.
Mental disorder often has a biological factor. Some researchers suppose it has to do with an individual’s failure to ignore stimuli. “Latent inhibition”, as coined by psychologists, is the ability to selectively disregard clear incoming thoughts, sights, and sounds by a mentally healthy person. For example, the capability to purposefully turn on the selective hearing button when someone gives an unsolicited sermon. According to Collingwood, a study of almost 200 thousand 20-year-old Finnish males showed those with higher intelligence were more than 12 times prone to develop bipolar disorder as they get older. The link, as presumed by the researchers, was the ability to quickly process information while problem-solving, a hyper-alertness thought to complement some types of mental illnesses.
These may all sound promising and while some psychologists and researchers declare that there’s an advantage to mental disorder such as boundless productive thinking and creativity, there is however, another side to the coin. Bipolar disorder, if taken for granted and remained untreated, can lead to suicidal tendencies and alcoholic or drug abuse. Studies aimed for this could also affect the way mental illness is understood and treated such as finding the best treatment, if an individual cope with a bipolar disorder, but depends on the flashes of genius that stir up when depression shifts into obsession.
Lastly, there is also the case of negative proof pertaining to this presumption of the relationship between mental disorder and creative genius. According to Collingwood, there are some researches that have yielded no difference in intelligence level between those with bipolar disorder against those without. Moreover, others specify that superior intelligence is a protective component against psychotic illnesses and that inferior intellect is related with developing, severe bipolar disorder. Because of this, an expanded deal of study is being conducted for this issue, with the full intention of understanding how this illness is related to intelligence. Well, the case of geniuses and madness is closed for now.
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