Creativity and mental health: A profile of writers and musicians

Creativity and its link with mental health have always been much speculated about. However there have been a handful of methodologically sound studies to clearly establish the relationship between creativity and mental health. The objective of the study therefore was to examine the psychiatric morbidity stress profile, coping skills and personality profile in creative versus non-creative populations. Forty writers, 40 musicians and 40 controls chosen after randomization, who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria constituted the sample of the study. All the subjects were administered GHQ-28; SCAN for all GHQ positives (and 10% of GHQ-ves), Perceived stress scale and coping check list and NEO-FFI. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 11.0 version. Pearson's correlation, Chi-square and ANOVA one-way tests were used. The present study corroborated the findings of earlier studies in 70's and 80's that there was no difference between creative and non-creative groups in terms of mental illness and stress profile. The writers differed significantly from the other two groups on religious and faith domain of coping skills. The two creative groups had similar personality characteristics and scored significantly high on all dimensions compared to the non-creative group.