I have been long fascinated with mental conditions, even though telling someone to take a bus to Erragadda (literally, Red Rock, and the location of a mental asylum in that city), was some kind of a witty comeback in Hyderabad when I grew up there in 1980s. The mind (or is it more like thought?) to me is the final frontier, the mystery that can't be solved. And when in comes to women, give me a fine mind, and you will find me forthing at the mouth. Besides, many of the heros - Vangogh, for instance - I have hearded into my pantheon were certifiably mad; I sometimes wonder if induction into this pantheon first requires that these heros should have behaved outrageously, if not badly?

So it is with glee I read this article (pdf file), which discusses the connections between genius/ creativity and madness - the kind medical folk would be interested in. The most cheerful section of this article:

"Colin Martindale in 1972 studied 42 English and French poets, and found significant psychiatric illness in 45% of them. Arnold Ludwig (1992) in an impressive study of 1004 twentieth century artists and writers, found that 74% of them exhibited psychiatric symptoms at some stage of their lives, which compares with 32% for the national average. It must be admitted that labeling dead artists retrospectively with psychiatric diagnosis has raised many sceptical eyebrows.

Fortunately, there are a few studies of contemporary artists, writers and musicians. In 1974, Nancy Andreasen from the University of Iowa studied 30 faculty members attending a writers’ workshop and found that 80% of the writers suffered from depression or bipolar disorder, compared to 30% of her matched controls.

Kay Redfield Jamison in 1989 studied 47 distinguished British writers and visual artists, and found that 38% of them had been previously treated for a mood disorder, including bipolar disorder, which compares to less than 15% of the British general population.

Arnold Ludwig studied a sample of 59 female writers attending a Women Writers Conference and found that psychiatric problems were four times higher in writers compared with non-writers. Finally, data from the US Bureau of the Census showed that the overall suicide rate among artists in the USA is three times the national average."

O what joy to learn that writers are more likely to be mentall ill, and are more likely to kill themselves - as if the basic difficulties of becoming one are not daunting enough*. Also in the face of this stack of data, I am debating if I should stop resisting from drugging myself, and see if Student Health will put me on Prozac, "you know like" tomorrow?

*Attention Pitaji: I know you read this; so here is another perfectly good reason why I shouldn't wed, not only before I hit the dreaded "30" but any time at all - I am more like to go mad, and kill myself. Tell that to those suitable girls, and let me know how many are still enthusiastic afterwards.