The debate rages between Schlesinger (Reference Schlesinger2004) and Wills (Reference Wills2004) over the evidence for a link between mental illness and creativity, but I believe that their focus is wrong.
Most studies to date have either focused on anecdotal (biographical) evidence or have been methodologically flawed retrospective cohort studies, and all would rate low on the hierarchy of evidence. Whatever the outcome of Schlesinger's and Wills' arguments, the question will remain unanswered until better controlled, masked, prospective and replicable randomised studies are carried out.
What is not in question is that mental illness is at least as prevalent in the creative community as in the general population and there are even examples of how some artists, including Dali and Munch, have used their mental illness to feed into the creative process (Reference SalomanSaloman, 1996; Reference RothenbergRothenberg, 2001). Given the hefty side-effect profiles of most psychiatric treatments, surely the emphasis should be on how best to treat such exceptional patients - indeed all patients - in a way that minimises their symptoms without rendering them incapable of practising their trade. That is, after all (at the risk of sounding naïve), naive), what we are here for.
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