Well I certainly got more creative since I stopped treating my anal itching. Fingers smell better, too.
> Contact: Michelle Brandt
> mbrandt at stanford.edu
> 650-723-0272
> Stanford University Medical Center
>
> Stanford researchers establish link between creative
> genius and mental illness
> STANFORD, Calif. - For decades, scientists have known
> that eminently creative individuals have a much higher
> rate of manic depression, or bipolar disorder, than
> does the general population. But few controlled
> studies have been done to build the link between
> mental illness and creativity. Now, Stanford
> researchers Connie Strong and Terence Ketter, MD, have
> taken the first steps toward exploring the
> relationship.
>
> Using personality and temperament tests, they found
> healthy artists to be more similar in personality to
> individuals with manic depression than to healthy
> people in the general population. "My hunch is that
> emotional range, having an emotional broadband, is the
> bipolar patient's advantage," said Strong. "It isn't
> the only thing going on, but something gives people
> with manic depression an edge, and I think it's
> emotional range."
>
> Strong is a research manager in the Department of
> Psychiatry and Behavioral Science's bipolar disorders
> clinic and a doctoral candidate at the Pacific
> Graduate School. She is presenting preliminary results
> during a poster presentation today (May 21) at the
> annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association
> Meeting in Philadelphia.
>
> The current study is groundbreaking for psychiatric
> research in that it used separate control groups made
> up of both healthy, creative people and people from
> the general population.
>
> Researchers administered standard personality,
> temperament and creativity tests to 47 people in the
> healthy control group, 48 patients with successfully
> treated bipolar disorder and 25 patients successfully
> treated for depression. She also tested 32 people in a
> healthy, creative control group. This group was
> comprised of Stanford graduate students enrolled in
> prestigious product design, creative writing and fine
> arts programs, including Stegner Fellows in writing,
> students in the interdisciplinary Joint Program in
> Design from the Department of Mechanical Engineering
> and studio arts master's students from the Department
> of Art & Art History. All subjects were matched for
> age, gender, education and socioeconomic status.
>
> Preliminary analysis showed that people in the control
> group and recovered manic depressives were more open
> and likely to be moody and neurotic than healthy
> controls. Moodiness and neuroticism are part of a
> group of characteristics researchers are calling
> "negative-affective traits" which also include mild,
> nonclinical forms of depression and bipolar disorder.
>
> Though the data are preliminary, they provide a
> roadmap for psychiatric researchers looking to solve
> the genius/madness paradox depicted in the movie A
> Beautiful Mind, which tells the story of Nobel
> Laureate John Nash. The existing data need further
> review, Strong said. "And, we need to expand this to
> other groups," he said. How mood influences the
> performance of artists and genius scientists will be
> the subject of future research at Stanford. "We need
> to better understand the emotional side of what they
> do," Strong said.
>
>
> ###
> The study was funded by grants to Ketter, principal
> investigator and associate professor of psychiatry and
> behavioral science at Stanford, from the National
> Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression,
> and Abbott Laboratories.
>
> Stanford University Medical Center integrates
> research, medical education and patient care at its
> three institutions - Stanford University School of
> Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile
> Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. For more
> information, please visit the Web site of the medical
> center's Office of Communication & Public Affairs at
> http://mednews.stanford.edu.
>
> MEDIA CONTACT:
> Michelle Brandt at 650-723-0272 (mbrandt at stanford.edu)
>
>
> BROADCAST MEDIA CONTACT:
> M.A. Malone at 650-723-6912 (mamalone at stanford.edu)
>
>
>
> =====
> Kevin Dean
> Buffalo, NY
> ICQ: 8616001
> AIM: KDean75206
> Buffalo Activist Network
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