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.

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

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 lead to a dangerous mindset that to be successful in your art you should not seek help with your mental health. If your art feels like the only thing you have or the only thing that gives you value, the possibility of losing it to something that might make you better is terrifying.

I don’t want to lose my sparkle

I went to an art school as a teenager and while many of the students were average youths with average levels of mental health, there were some folks with issues, myself being one of them. I hadn’t been diagnosed, but I understand now that I was suffering from anxiety and depression as a result of CPTSD from a traumatic, abusive family situation I was still living in at the time. While you’re still in a warzone, though, it can be hard to have an accurate perspective on it, so understanding and coping with the effects it had on me is still something I’m working on.