Written Might 27, 2011
Up to date Might 27, 2025
If Van Gogh took psychiatric treatment, would Starry Night time nonetheless exist — or would the world be slightly 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 at present. Psychiatric treatment and creativity are merely perennial subjects. Their go-to instance is all the time 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 at present. And if that’s true, then others shouldn’t take psychiatric drugs both, as they need 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 isn’t 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 consistently 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 are attempting 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 treatment.
Why This Fantasy Persists About Psychiatric Medicine
I’ve had hypomanic occasions the place I’ve written and written and written and written. 1000’s and 1000’s of phrases have poured out of my cranium. And so they have been good.
Or no less than, I assumed so on the time.
Hypomanic (and manic) individuals suppose they’re good. Suppose they’re unbelievably proficient and artistic. 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 Medicine
Since being on psych meds, I’ve written 1000’s of pages. 1000’s. 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 treatment.
After all, if I’m too depressed due to the bipolar to get off the sofa, that has a reasonably hostile impact on producing something, proficient or not.
Artists, Psychiatric Medicine, Creativity, and Loss of life
However so that you don’t agree with me. You have got personally discovered you’re good off meds and never on. Okay. Tremendous. And possibly you suppose you’d be prepared to half along with your ear to be Van Gogh. Okay. Tremendous.
However you may want to remember some actually good individuals who killed themselves on account of 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 occasions. And I shan’t recuperate 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 suppose two individuals might have been happier ’til this horrible illness got here. I can’t combat any longer. . . I can’t learn.
There are, after all, a complete bunch of different proficient individuals, each recognized and unknown, who had their lives lower quick by suicide as effectively.
And my guess is that the family members of each single a type of individuals want that psychiatric remedy had been obtainable for his or her family members. Nobody needs a portray greater than their daughter or son.
Psych Medicine 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 already know what actually kills your creativity?
Loss of life.
I’ll go away you with this snippet of a poem about suicide that basically drives dwelling this level:
The Alternative
by Lesléa Newman
. . .
Or you may raise the paring knife
from the kitchen drawer
and free the veins
that rise to satisfy the pores and skin
There isn’t 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 treatment. I’m simply saying that’s a poor excuse for not taking treatment. It actually misses the entire level. Your life is extra vital than artwork. Simply ask anybody who loves you. (Additionally, the fitting treatment can completely cut back this challenge.)
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