Written Might 27, 2011
Up to date Might 27, 2025
If Van Gogh took psychiatric treatment, would Starry Evening nonetheless exist — or would the world be just a little 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 sicknesses had been medicated, we wouldn’t have their artwork at this time. Psychiatric treatment and creativity are merely perennial matters. 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 nice artist we all know him to be at this time. And if that’s true, then others shouldn’t take psychiatric medicines 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 method. 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 continually 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 treatment.
Why This Delusion 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. They usually have been sensible.
Or a minimum of, I believed so on the time.
Hypomanic (and manic) folks suppose they’re sensible. Assume they’re unbelievably proficient and inventive. 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 sensible. 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 inventive. 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 opposed 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’ve gotten personally discovered you’re sensible off meds and never on. Okay. Wonderful. And perhaps you suppose you’d be prepared to half together with your ear to be Van Gogh. Okay. Wonderful.
However you may want to bear in mind some actually sensible individuals who killed themselves because 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 observe to her husband:
I really feel sure that I’m going mad once more. I really feel we will’t undergo one other of these horrible occasions. 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 one of the best factor to do. . . I don’t suppose two folks 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 folks, each recognized and unknown, who had their lives reduce quick by suicide as nicely.
And my guess is that the family members of each single a type of folks want that psychiatric remedy had been obtainable for his or her family members. Nobody desires a portray greater than their daughter or son.
Psych Medicine Destroys Creativity and Artwork
So don’t give me the nonsense argument that medicines 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 actually drives residence this level:
The Alternative
by Lesléa Newman
. . .
Or you possibly can 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 observe 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 correct treatment can completely scale back this problem.)
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