Trauma and Mental Health Issues Aren’t What Makes You a Better Artist
So let’s release this belief that you should be tortured by your own brain.
It’s a common narrative that with talent or “genius,” there always comes a cost. If you can create, you must trade something for it, often it comes at the cost of your health and relationships.
When we look at artists like Van Gogh, Silvia Plath, and others with mental health issues we are only beginning to better understand at this time, it seems to reinforce the truth of those statements. Indeed, in the small studies that have been done so far, it seems that creatives, like writers and musicians, are more likely to have mental illnesses than the general population.
So what might be the reason for that?
For some, mental illness may arise from traumatic situations, and having those experiences can change your perspective. But for many, I believe art becomes their way of therapizing themselves (I know this was very much the case for me), especially when they had few options in the time or place they were living. Art therapy, for example, is still a tool used by many healthcare professionals right now.
But with this well-known connection between mental health and art sometimes being romanticized, it can…
