Why is it that creative people are more often the ones who experience depression?

Question

Including Van Gogh and Dostoyevsky, among others

Answer 1

We can think too much and too deep at one time and also can feel other's emotions and pain so strong that it can all come colliding down on us.

Answer 2

I Am One Of Those People. I Am An Artist And I Go Through So Much Depression I Almost Committed Suicide When Noone Was Home. I Sat At My Desk With The Knife Close To My Heart. Then The Door Slammed Shut And I Knew I Wasnt Alone. I Have The Knide Hidden Under My Pillow.

Answer 3

Muses are often born with one parent being depression and the other hope. Creative people are not only normally afflicted with depression, they are also the people who feel it the hardest and often from external sources as they tend to be very perceptive in areas but also often quite blind in others. A well rounded person is rather round you could say. They neither feel the flight nor the depths. They excel at little but are horrible at little as well.

Just to make it worse, creative people are their own worst critics normally. In such a subjective cause such as art, music and such there is little positive feedback. The greatest tend to be harsher than their numerous critics and the praise often slides off. Being an accomplished creative person requires drive. Criticism helps make you better but it also sits in the soul and nips and bites and claws and scratches. Thus depressions sister self doubt comes to visit. Writers throw away their best work in fits of self doubt. Musicians butcher their compositions. Painters whitewash the canvas in frustration. They do not see the merit they hear the criticism.

To be creative and to express that creativity is to thrust yourself willingly or unwillingly in front of others and to be judged for the merit of your work. Whether justly or unjustly the creative person cannot hold it back. They have to find outlets for their work and it's hard to hide it from the harshness of the popular opinion. On a good day the praise produces highs, on a bad day lows and in between is the worry about whether it's a high or a low. The hours of toil all finally comes down to a climax atop often unrealistically high standards.

Remember creation is much like giving birth. You parent your creation. You fret over it. Finally you have to stand back and watch it live or die on it's own merit. You can protect it no more. The shorter the cycle of such leaving the nest the more empty nest syndrome comes to roost. If you've worked lovingly over a novel for 2 years it really is hard to say it's "Done". To be happy with it. To let it go out into the world on it's own. So many of the parental joys and hurts are bundled into rapid short cycles of creation.

Make sense? Yes it was a creative guess and I'd love to work on it more. But time has come.

Answer 4

I think designing anything is a most painful process and necessarily so. The more you design, the more you fall back onto your own bag of tricks and the more self critical you become. You can work on something and nothing .... no spark... intuitively you know the response you seek is there somewhere .... but your work is mediocre, at least from your own perspective ... sometimes, you wake and you know... sometimes you will sketch and innovative ideas just happen ... sometimes you wear yourself down for want of looking and walk away... in the middle of the night.. walking aournd the streets.... worse, when you have people arriving in the morning to review the work they have commissioned... the pressure is intense... the pain of design is intense.. sometimes these demands of teh financial world get so serious that it impacts on your ability to perform at all... it consumes you.... and then something else comes along... someone asks you about something long buried.. something that has nothing whatever to do with your current intellectual investigations... and it eats away at your mind... you turn it over and over.... but your family has to eat and your mortgage repaid... so you try to block it out... and sometimes.. you just have to perform knowing that hte work you are doing is mediocre by your own standards and that depresses you.. and sometimes you just allow yourself an hour so that you can't torture yoursel fin the process... and that depresses you too. I think it is difficult being creative. Creative people would prolly much rather do sommat else ... stock take... yes.. I could do accounting... I'd be good at it too. So pedantic to the point of obsession... but then that might depress me.

This was a lousy question by the way. I think I need a drink now.

Answer 5

Who else would think of such a thing on purpose? The more intelligent you are, the more choices you see. The more choices you see, the more difficult it is to pick one out of many.

the more intelligent you are, the bigger your world picture is. The bigger your world picture is, the more suffering and injustice you are exposed to.

Intelligence without emotional maturity and tremendous self discipline is more of a curse than a blessing. Intelligence does not make you live longer, (unless you are the inventor of your own cure) it does not make you happier, it does not allow you to let things slide, and it is not something you can turn on and off. Intelligence is a burden, carried by a few that can handle it, and many who cannot. Next time you meet a truly intelligent person, thank them. It will confuse the Hell out of them, but who knows, they might even be stupefied long enough for you to explain yourself. Considering how often they must stupefy others, it might be their first opportunity to experience the emotion firsthand!

Answer 6

Because creative types are more affected by things that less creative people may not even be aware of. Maybe just simple things such as getting down when the weather is bad because the warmer weather makes people feel better & may even influence creativity.
I would say that I am a creative person & I do suffer from mood swings a lot myself & get periods of depression.

Answer 7

Creative people are deep thinkers and over-analyze things. Often they into the future and the bad that can happen. A wild imagination is to blame.

Answer 8

I think its the other way round ..people who are prone to depression might have greater pain and deep feelings which need to find a release and all forms of art can be used to release emotion

Answer 9

Because we are more open to the emotions good and bad, we look at life with more passion, intensity and depth. But creative people also need to realize that what they give their attention to grows and if you want to have depression grow...just focus on it...it will..

Answer 10

The masses, who constitute the bulk of society, are not usually as creative and they cause "immense pressure," on the creative person's mind. This could be "one" possible reason.

Answer 11

T hey are so sensitive, it is a great gift and sometimes a heavy curse,
They see things other people miss. they think and are outside the box........ some of the most, beautiful,gifted
artist,musicans i know have some very dark times.......

so wrong because artist give us mere mortals beauty and a gift to see what they see or hear.......