Levels of everyday creativity were assessed from the quality and quantity of innovative accomplishments at work, at home, and in hobbies. Genes involved in manic depression may have been preserved through natural selection because they give carriers of the condition's milder form the advantage of enhanced creativity, adaptability, and work output, Richards theorizes. But he's done away with the notion that all eminent people have some form of psychopathology. Available evidence indicates that alcoholism, mild mania, and depression indeed occurred often in the mothers, fathers, and siblings of the eminent individuals in Ludwig's sample who also suffered from those conditions. But plenty of room remains for the influence of other factors on great creative feats, Ludwig asserts.
Some people just have incredible imaginations.
That doesn't mean they have a mental disorder. Suicide is the second major cause of death in college students and the number two killer of women between the ages of 15 and 44 worldwide. Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. He dispells myths about creativity being some mystical birth-right that only the chosen few possess, and implies the conclusion that creativity is more the product of an aware mind and feeling human being than tormented genius.