I read a very thought provoking post by Ginger Breo at The Seamstress of Avalon today.  In it she talks about how in her experience that it seems depression and creative people go hand and hand.  While I have absolutely no scientific evidence to prove whether this is factual or not, I have to say that in my experience it does seem that the more creative people tend to have more mental health issues than maybe someone who prefers to deal with facts and figures.

I was certainly not an over achiever in school, I think it would not be a lie to say I was definitely an under achiever.  Not because I was not smart, or did drugs, or drank alcohol.  It was mostly because I preferred to do my own thing.  That means when the class was supposed to be reading out of the History text book, I would be reading a real book about a historical time period I was more interested in.  Or when the class was dissecting a piece of literature from the Literature text book, I would be doing a cross word puzzle, because I had already read the Literature text book from cover to cover when they were first given out.  I lived in my head.  Told myself stories and had conversations with myself.  Looking back, I can see that I was more creative than I gave myself credit for.

As an adult, I have to say my creativity blossomed, but in an easily distracted kind of way.  Cross stitch, fabric applique,  painting on shirts, painting, knitting, crochet, just on and on.  I loved them all, and was quite good at them all.  However, when my depression got bad, I could not even concentrate on even the most basic of these. My imagination never stopped working though. The things that I imagined were definitely not coming from a mind that was even close to being healthy.

Once a proper medication mix was found and my thoughts quit racing, I was able to concentrate again.  However, all those things I used to be so creative in, no longer were of any interest to me.  My creativity blossomed in a completely surprising direction for me.  Writing.

Out of this new found direction, this blog was born.  What I have noticed though is that when my mental health is struggling a bit I am less outwardly creative, spending more time being creative in my head.  The creativity never stops, and when the struggle eases up, I find that I have a whole bunch of ideas and thoughts to write about.  Due to my therapy and medications, when I am struggling with my mental health my thoughts do not go nearly as dark as they used to.  In fact, most of them are more about what might have triggered things and how can I prevent it from happening again or what can I learn from it.  So in a round about way, it is as if my mental health issues feed my creativity.

As my mind becomes more healthy, I am finding more of a balance and it is not always the struggles that set off a bout of creativity in me.  I find that I am more able to use my successes as a creative outlet.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, if I had not gone through such a dark and terrible time in my mind, I would not have discovered that writing could be a creative outlet for me.  I had always believed my creativity lay in my hands and with textile art.  Not once in all the years before I chose to start writing did I believe that writing could be a form of art for me.

What do you think?  Do believe that there could be a link between mental health issues and creativity?  Or do you think that is just way off base?