Creative people are more prone to mental illness. It was found in a research conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institute, Sweden, in a large-scale study tracked almost 1.2 million patients and their relatives, identified down to second-cousin level.The results showed that certain mental illnesses - bipolar disorder, for instance - are more prevalent in the entire group of people with artistic or scientific professions, such as dancers, researchers, photographers and authors.
Authors also specifically were more common among most of the other psychiatric diseases (including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety syndrome and substance abuse) and were almost 50% more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Further, the researchers observed that creative professions were more common in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa and, to some extent, autism.
