Written Could 27, 2011
Up to date Could 27, 2025
If Van Gogh took psychiatric remedy, would Starry Night time nonetheless exist — or would the world be somewhat 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 as we speak. Psychiatric remedy and creativity are merely perennial subjects. 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 good artist we all know him to be as we speak. And if that’s true, then others shouldn’t take psychiatric drugs 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 manner. 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 consistently coping with folks 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 artistic earlier than I used to be loopy, earlier than I used to be medicated. And I’m artistic now, on psych remedy.
Why This Fantasy Persists About Psychiatric Treatment
I’ve had hypomanic instances 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 not less than, I assumed so on the time.
Hypomanic (and manic) folks assume they’re good. Assume they’re unbelievably gifted and artistic. Assume 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 artistic. I do have expertise, and that expertise hasn’t magically been eliminated due to psychiatric remedy.
After all, if I’m too depressed due to the bipolar to get off the sofa, that has a quite antagonistic 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. Effective. And possibly you assume you’d be prepared to half along with your ear to be Van Gogh. Okay. Effective.
However you may want to remember some really good individuals who killed themselves attributable to psychological sickness, together with Van Gogh, whose melancholy 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 word 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 instances. 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 most effective factor to do. . . I don’t assume two folks might have been happier ’til this horrible illness got here. I can’t struggle any longer. . . I can’t learn.
There are, in fact, an entire bunch of different gifted folks, each identified and unknown, who had their lives lower quick by suicide as effectively.
And my guess is that the family members of each single a kind of folks want that psychiatric remedy had been accessible 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 drugs are “dangerous” as a result of they hamper creativity. As a result of you recognize what actually kills your creativity?
Loss of life.
I’ll depart you with this snippet of a poem about suicide that basically 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 satisfy the pores and skin
There is no such thing as a one
save the poems you may write
Please word that I’m not saying that nobody has ever skilled a lower in artwork manufacturing due to being on psychiatric remedy. I’m simply saying that’s a poor excuse for not taking remedy. It actually misses the entire level. Your life is extra necessary than artwork. Simply ask anybody who loves you. (Additionally, the suitable remedy can completely cut back this subject.)
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