Writers suffer from mental illness?

Man now there is scientific proof I'm mental.

I know I have found myself repeating a lot

"READ MY NOVELS"

You write novels, Peter? Are they published by actual print (not POD) publishers? I checked your profile but you don't have one.

Writers are mental because we laugh in the face of file folders full of rejections.

Writers are mental because we'd rather be creating a world of our own than living in the one we're in.

Writers are mental because an approving word from a reader makes us bask like a cat in a warm slip of sunshine.

And finally, writers are mental because we just can't stop writing.

(Hmmm. I bet I could make a story out of this!)

Daine's Dream

For me, creating in any of the art forms (art, writing, musical composition) is a healing process. I do it because I can, and because it helps me to get things out of my head. I don't know how I feel about being called "ill" per se, but aren't we all just a little bit "ill"?

Who really cares about the "labels" people give us? I s'pose I'm at the age where I know who I am and am not ashamed of it.

Yes, I tell my friends the same story more than once b/c I don't recall ever telling them the tale in the first place. "Oh, have you heard about this new book . . . ." If I see them rolling their eyes, I know to stop talking.

Yes, I sometimes forget that Icy Sparks or Lily Owens (Secret Life of Bees) aren't real people but exist only in the novels I'm reading.

Yes, I like writing and reading about emotional upset of any kind. Actually, the more heart-wrenching, the better.

Do these things make me mentally ill? Well, then, welcome to MY world.

If you look at what is presented as sane in our culture, I'll take crazy, thanks. Infact, after being hospitlized for depression, I decided that I was not the crazy one.

Crazy people keep doing the same things over and over and expect to get different results.....

Writers keep making up new stories, and the people we meet in those stories are as real as we are because they are us....the larger us out there in the cosmos/collective unconscous or the ether.

I fully believe that writing is what keeps me sane...and it has ever since I started at age 15.

Yes, I think keeping a journal is therapeutic and I also think writers do tend to have higher rates of depression, bipolar illness and other mental illnesses. But don't take my word for it. Go to Google and Yahoo and you'll see study after study noting that the rate of depression is as much as 10 TIMES GREATER in writers than the general population.

No one really understands why but many of the greatest writers suffered terrible bouts of depression and many have written about it, including William Styron. One of the unanswered questions is: does treatment help or hurt creativity? I tend to think it helps but Hemingway took his life after a series of shock treatments for his depression, convinced it ruined his creativity. So there are differing views about this.

By the way, it isn't just writers but creative people in general who seem to be predisposed to this. Sylvia Plath committed suicide as did Virginia Woolf. Ernest Hemingway's depression is reputed to have passed down to at least one of his grandchildren, a model/actress who committed suicide and was reputed to have depression.

Actors such as Robert Downey, Owen Wilson, Mel Gibson and Robin Williams have struggled with depression and drug addiction and there is an overlap between depression and turning to alcohol for "self-medication", obscuring the real biochemical problem at the root of the issue. Sometimes drug addiction isn't the real issue, just a symptom of a deeper problem. Treat that problem and you can get the alcohol use to go down - sometimes.

Mike Wallace was hit by depression late in life and was pretty honest about how hard it was for him to cope with it. For those who think depression is a sign of "weak character" or lack of willpower, it is NOT. One indication that depression starts from a biochemical imbalance is by looking at the number of people who've had heart surgery who go through weeks of depression afterwards. This isn't just because they've faced mortality but because the surgery causes major biochemical fluctutations, some having to do with brain chemistry.

Sorry to go on and on but there is such a STIGMA associated with mental illness when it should be taken as seriously as any illness, from diabetes to cancer. Yet we seem to think anything affecting how we feel is all about self-control and strength of character rather than a sometime life-threatening mood disorder.

Thanks, Jane. I had forgotten about Margot Hemingway committing suicide, too.

And I didn't know about Mike Wallace.

I wish mental health problems were treated as simply (and without whispers) as physical illness.

Hehe...in the first week of Writing The Novel for school we were given a worksheet with myths about writers and one was that as person has to be crazy to be a writer...and me and my friends were like "Ok, so that's a myth, and it's just a coincidence that all the writers we know are completely mental" xD This article just reminded me of that.

Anyway, interesting article. ^_^ Thanks.

I already know I'm abnormal and out to lunch most days.

I'm a write-a-holic. My wife tolerates this as long as I cook dinner.

Writing is definitely therapeutic. I encourage everyone to write and to not worry about spelling or grammar or any of that. Who cares unless you plan on publishing? Just write and get it out of your system.

Fate and Destiny - Chapter 2