Anyone with any experience of mental illness knows it’s not the romantic well of creativity that literature and pop culture can make it out to be, but I would like to think through creativity and success in regards to depression.

What makes pop culture represent depression in such an idealised/idolised and romantic manner anyway? I know in high school I used to say I wanted to die before I got old – to go out with potential before I inevitably disappointed everyone. But romanticized? Is it because Ernest Hemingway shot himself and Virginia Woolf drowned herself? Are those really the standards of literary creative genius? To me, there is nothing #pale about suicide no matter how many soft grunge Tumblr posts you look at.

If depression affects so many diverse groups of people, why are creative types singled out? What’s the link between the two?

While the possible solutions are many (the mind is a very complicated subject, after all), countless psychologists and psychiatrists tend to agree that major depression is amplified in those who tend to ruminate on their thoughts.

… Creatives naturally tend to think more, and think about their very thoughts too. … Creative thinkers tend to [replay] events over and over again to better understand them.

In this sense, it’s not the romantic notion of depression that leads to creativity, but that those more inclined to intensely think and re-think (and therefore tend to be creative types) are more likely to experience depression more intensely.

Another theory for the link so widely discussed between depression and creativity is that while creative types experience depression, they also experience higher rises due to motivation after “coming out of” the depression. I have trouble accepting this simply for the relative ease given to “coming out of” depression, it does help to displace the false idea that depression fuels creativity. Perhaps it is a more plausible explanation for creativity in bipolar disorder:

Professor Kay Redfield Jamison, who wrote the landmark Scientific American article, is an international authority on the subject, both as a psychiatrist and as a person with bipolar.  She observes that manic-depressives in their high or manic state think faster and associate more freely. When manic, people need less sleep, have unusual energy and focus and an inflated self-belief, all of which may allow the production of original work.

On the other hand, the creative professions themselves can tend to be a perfect combination of factors that may contribute to depression:

Here, again, I’m speaking mostly about writers. Our work tends to be done alone. We spend long hours in front of a computer screen trying to make our words make sense. We edit relentlessly. We socialize, yes, but infrequently and on a different frequency than most. Our creativity sets us apart, and it often makes it difficult to connect with people who don’t share that background and outlook.

We don’t tend to sleep as well. We have less consistent hours. We often go sleep deprived or collapse for long nights after going without for too long. We feel driven by ideas that won’t let us sleep. We are often night owls.

But consistent sleep and waking early help improve stability and happiness.The number one predictor of happiness is the number and strength of one’s social connections.And this doesn’t even touch on being sedentary, having the high stress of deadlines, how constantly we face rejection. The traditional lifestyle of the writer is in many ways the perfect storm of depression risk factors.

Correlation, of course, does not equal causation.

We know depression and creativity co-exist, but … well … it’s like this: If you have severe depression, you have to get pretty damn creative to survive it.

Sometimes the black hole of depression can be so life-engulfing it’s impossible to see through to when it will be light again. And, while it’s cliched and embarrassing, for those times here is a list of people who have made something of themselves despite/in spite of the struggle:

Buzz Aldrin

Sheryl Crow

Ellen Degeneres

Owen Wilson

Abraham Lincoln

Charles Darwin