Creativity & Mental Illness: Are Writers Quite Possibly Out of Their Minds?

"All poets are mad,” asserted English writer Robert Burton in his 1621 book, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Burton was exaggerating, of course. However, many people do believe that artists, and writers are more likely than others to be mentally ill. Many well-known artists, writers and musicians have had a history of mental illness, in some cases leading to suicide. Writers Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, along with painter Vincent van Gogh, and musician Kurt Cobain all committed suicide. Painters Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe, and musicians’ Cole Porter and Charles Mingus suffered from depression. Is there actually a link between artistic creativity and mental illness? Most artists are not mentally ill, and most mentally ill people are not artists. However, several studies have suggested that artists are more likely than others to suffer from a class of mental illnesses called mood disorders, which include major depression and manic-depressive illness.