Many of you reading this probably went all of this past week without knowing that it was National Suicide Prevention Week. Suicide is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in America, yet usually only gets national coverage when someone of prominence dies unexpectedly, sadly. Depression is a leading cause of suicide, and through a little bit of research, I came across an interesting version of this particular story.
According to an article I found on creativesomething.net, there exists a link between depression and creativity. Before writing this article, I figured that the link would be that people who suffer from depression or anxiety disorders would tend to be, therefore, more creative. This article showed me, however, that the opposite is true.
The article states that creative people are the ones who tend to suffer from depression or anxiety disorders. This is because the more creative people tend to be the ones who spend their time in their thoughts, and those thoughts can be positive or negative. When they become negative, it can be difficult for the creative person not to ruminate on those bad things for extended periods of time, thus sending them into states of depression.
However, the creative process tends not to really kick in for these individuals until the depressed states begins to wear down. The person begins to reflect on their experience being sad and begins to create when they are feeling slightly better. This is not always the case, and I am not trying to put all creative people into one category and say, “This is the way you are and I know it.”
I had spent my time preparing for this article knowing that I was looking for sources that confirmed my belief that people who suffer from depression tend to be more creative, simply by observing their thoughts. However, I discovered that the opposite is true. For me, this was an eye-opening experience, in that I do not know all there is about depression and what leads to those thoughts or what can be created out of those thoughts. This past week was a perfect time to reflect and read about it, but now that it is over, I feel an even bigger call to answer those questions that people are sometimes unable to answer themselves.
